Description
Book SynopsisExamines the dynamic relationship between the body, clothing, and identity in sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing from the insights of anthropology and history and influenced by developments in cultural studies, this volume investigates the relations between ideas about the self and those about the family, gender, and national groups.
Trade Review“An excellent book.
Clothing and Difference will contribute to knowledge about Africa as well as to the general topic of the communication process involved in dressing the body.”—Joanne B. Eicher, University of Minnesota
“Innovative, rich, and engaging. This collection’s concern with how the body surface mediates constructions of identity in colonial and post-colonial Africa makes an important contribution to ongoing scholarship on the body, clothing, and consumption in anthropology, history, and cultural studies.”—Karen Tranberg Hansen, Northwestern University
Table of ContentsFigures
Acknowledgments
Introduction / Hildi Hendrickson
I. Creating Social Identities
1. Virginity Cloths and Vaginal Coverings in Ekiti, Nigeria / Elisha P. Renne
2. "I Dress in This Fashion": Transformations in
Sotho Dress and Women's lives in a Sekhukhuneland Village, South Africa / Deborah James
3. Mediating Threads: Clothing and the Texture of Spirit/Medium Relations in
Bori (Southern Niger) / Adeline Masquelier
II. Challenging Authority
4. Female "
Alhajis" and Entrepreneurial Fashions: Flexible Identities in Southeastern Nigerian Clothing Practice / Misty L. Bastian
5. Dressing at Death: Clothing, Time, and Memory in Buhaya, Tanzania / Brad Weiss
III. Intercultural Relations and the Creation of Value
6. Dressed to "Shine": Work, Leisure, and Style in Malindi, Kenya / Johanna Schoss
7. "Sunlight Soap Has Changed My Life": Hygiene, Commodification, and the Body in Colonial Zimbabwe / Timothy Burke
8. Bodies and Flags: The Representation of Herero Identity in Colonial Namibia / Hildi Hendrickson
References
Notes on Contributors
Index
