Modernité, corps et transformation de soi: Les salons de coiffure aux îles Tonga (Polynésie occidentale)

Abstract

Towards the end of the years following 2000 a veritable epidemic of hair salons occurred in Nuku'alofa, the small capital of the Tongan islands. This phenomenon reflects new ways of understanding the body by means of which Tongan women attempt to distance themselves from traditional life without however leaving it behind totally. Transgender men, who belong to a marginalised yet important category, play a pivotal role in these bodily transformations because of the sense of hy giene and beauty which they are believed to possess. This ethnographic case allows us to propose an approach to modernity viabodily transformations and to observe the potentially important role played by members of marginalised social categories in this process.