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Paper short abstract

Drawing on ethnography in Havana, this paper examines la perla—subdermal penile beads—as a bodily technique through which men negotiate masculinity, precarity, and respect. The modified body emerges as an archive of endurance, desire, and relational value.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines la perla—the practice of inserting beads beneath the skin of the penis among men in Havana—as a bodily technique through which masculinity is made, tested, and reworked under conditions of economic crisis and social precarity. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in working-class neighborhoods and everyday street life, the paper approaches the modified body as an ethnographic archive: a material record of relations, moral economies, and affective investments that shape masculine self-making.

Rather than treating la perla solely as a marker of hypermasculinity or sexual performance, the paper shows how it operates as a relational form of embodied capital. Based on life-history interviews with men who underwent the practice in prison, during military service, and through street-based networks, it traces how the pearl circulates across institutions that discipline male bodies while also generating alternative forms of value, respect, and recognition. Pain, risk, and endurance emerge not as proofs of domination, but as techniques through which men negotiate vulnerability, belonging, and moral standing among other men and within intimate relationships.

The paper further reflects on how masculinity is produced in and through the ethnographic encounter itself. Access to these narratives unfolds through gendered and affective negotiations, situating the researcher’s body as part of the field’s relational economy rather than outside it. Attending to these dynamics, the paper argues for masculine self-fashioning as a situated practice assembled through bodily intervention, narrative performance, and relational recognition across shifting political, economic, and institutional conditions.