No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Dress and politics in post-world war II Abeokuta (western Nigeria)
... The ethnic differentiation formerly expressed by specific local styles was to be replaced by easily readable uniform signs. In Nigeria, for instance, the Yoruba-style gown was gradually adopted as the so called "national attire" for men (Byfield 2004) whereas in Senegal, the light blue grand boubou as an outward attribute of the Muslim faith turned into a symbol of national pride and unity. The revival of tradition and culture to achieve political aims gave dress a strong symbolic meaning. ...
... In the post-Second World War era in Nigeria (Abeokuta), for instance, a group of socially engaged middle-and upper-class women decided to dress in a conventional combination of wrapper and blouse of cheap material to demonstrate solidarity with ordinary market women and to draw the public attention to their urgent needs. (Byfield 2004) In reality, there was no need for women to go back to tradition as they had always retained the former lifestyle and had never fully adopted Western dress. Jones' and Leshkovich's theoretical study of the processes of globalization focuses on the underlying power relations and ideological constructions which reproduce the hierarchical divide between the Western fashion system and the non-Western dress traditions. ...
West Africa experienced a grand revival of clothing styles in the 80's primarily because of globalization. The choice of dress becomes even more important. The expanding fashion sector is to be understood both as a consequence of the economic crisis and as a medium for dealing with the crisis. Also, the fact that fashion consumption has developed into a socially recognized practice is based on local values and social codes. In the modern context of fragile social bonds, desperate economic conditions and moral insecurity, fashion is increasingly taking up center stage in the public's critical attention. Presently, Africa's fashion has been increasingly getting attention from Germany and other European countries.
... Different studies have dealt with the place of clothing in post-colonial Africa, the connection between identity and dress, and the way in which processes of modernization leave their mark on traditional dress. It is worth mentioning inter alia the following studies: the hybrid patterns of clothes among women in Ghana as a combined expression of national pride and the adoption of Western fashion (Gott 2010); the central role of tailors in the creation of elite fashion in Senegal (Grabski 2009); clothing as a political actor among Nigerian women after World War II (Byfield 2004); the inculcation of gender and sexuality in different styles of dress in Zambia (Hansen 2004); loyalty to traditional dress in Senegal's era of consumerism (Diop and Merunka 2013); and the changing place of the African fashion industry in the era of mass production (Rabine 2010). A partial overview, such as that presented here, testifies to the richness of research concerning different aspects of clothes; however, it also highlights the mainstream way of examining this phenomenon in, primarily, the Western region of Africa. ...
This article focuses on issues of agency, material culture, and national and gender identity in the life experiences of Eritrean women refugees in Tel Aviv, Israel. This anthropological research examined two main styles of dress: everyday dress that reflects Western lifestyle and traditional patterns of dress. I demonstrate how clothes serve as a political site within which perceptions of gender and nationalism are reshaped, thus creating the women's refugee identity. I conclude by suggesting that the refugee experience can be seen to reinforce expressions of liberation and empowerment. I further argue that the dressed body can be seen as an active agent that shapes the new reality of the women refugees in their host country.
... Because of the contingent meanings of the dressed body, clothing readily becomes a contested issue (Allman 2004a). Recent works focus on dress to examine struggles over class, gender, and generation (Byfield 2004, Fair 2004, Moorman 2004, investigating attempts to create "national dress" before and after HANSEN independence (Allman 2004b, De Jorio 2002. Tensions over "proper dress" arising from the popularity of miniskirts continue after independence, revolving around issues of national culture (Ivaska 2004), revolution (Burgess 2002), and gender and sexual dynamics (Hansen 2004). ...
Clothing research has attracted renewed interest in anthropology over the past two decades, experiencing a florescence that had been kept within bounds by reigning theoretical paradigms. The works have been influenced by general explanatory shifts in anthropology, which inform disparate bodies of clothing research that otherwise have little unity. The most noticeable trend is a preoccupation with agency, practice, and performance that considers the dressed body as both subject in, and object of, dress practice. The turn to consumption as a site and process of meaning making is evident also in clothing research. Dress has been analyzed, by and large, as representing something else rather than something in its own right, although new efforts to reengage materiality suggest that this approach is changing. Little work has been done on clothing production issues, though some scholars examine the significance of dress in the context of the entire economic circuit and the unequal relationships between its actors.
This chapter examines the role of cultural and religious practices in influencing fashion and sartorial choices of political actors during the campaign period(s) in contemporary Kenya. The study uses the case of two local political protagonists, that is, Raila Amolo Odinga (Raila Amolo Odinga, aged 77, is one of the longest serving political bigwigs in Kenya today. He served as the Prime Minister of Kenya from 2008 to 2013. He has unsuccessfully contested for presidency five times) and William Samoe Ruto (William Samoe Ruto, aged 54, is the current sitting deputy president of Kenya. In August 2022, he was elected as the president in a hotly contested election), to explore how they use dress and other bodily wears in sociocultural events as a performative act in seeking political legitimacy and public approval. The chapter further addresses how the duo frame dress as a political language and how the same is perceived and interpreted by the public through social media platforms. The findings reveal that dress as a site of political performance persuasively invites the political class to exploit cultural and religious regalia as means of advancing their political interests and dominance.
The purpose of this article is to discuss the cultural creativity that Nana Kofi Abuna V, the Chief of Essipun Traditional Area in the Western Region of Ghana, is investing in transgressing gender boundaries as a woman chief. Deploying an ethnographic research approach and biographical narrative, feminism as a methodological framework, I argue that Nana is breaking the boundaries of gender to chart new pathways as a woman chief. Nana is one of the few women chiefs in contemporary Ghana. Nana’s ascent to the stool as a chief diverges from the ‘conventional’ practice of male political rule in Akan traditional societies. Since Nana is a woman who bears a male name (Kofi), she acts as a male chief of her Traditional Area. But as a deaconess (church officer) of the Church of Pentecost (CoP), Ghana’s largest Protestant denomination, Nana did not submit to the performance of the rituals of chieftaincy during her installation. Similarly, Nana’s Pentecostal leaning does not permit her to perform ‘chiefship’ rituals. This goes contrary to the centrality of Akan chieftaincy as an ancestral cult and its attendant rituals. Nana, as a Pentecostal woman chief, therefore, breaks through culturally-induced gender boundaries to perform chiefship roles.
How, when and to whom should a woman marry, what constitutes marriage and what rights has a woman to influence the selection of her spouse? These and other questions were subjects of intense contestation between young men and women and their parents, on one hand, and, on the other, between commoners and members of the traditional elite in the Western Igbo district of Igbuzo in Southern Nigeria during the early twentieth century. Disputes over marriage rites centred on the politics of isinmo or the shaving of a woman's head. Isinmo gave the “barber” exclusive and inalienable rights to the woman. Yet, in what amounted to reversal of tradition, women seeking to end or reduce parental and patriarchal control appropriated some the rituals of isinmo to contest its use and efficacy in the hands of its erstwhile beneficiaries.
Dhoti colors have apparent political meaning in contemporary Kerala. Communists have started wearing red dhoti in private and public life recently, to counter the rampant visibility of saffron dhoti, which signifies Hindu religious identity in a shared meaning that exist in villages across north Kerala, and the same dhoti has also turned as the symbol of right-wing Hindu political parties, the political rival of the Communist party in the state. Earlier, the saffron dhoti was very popular among Hindus in Kerala, without any political differences—liberal Hindus, right-wing political Hindus, secular Hindus, and communist Hindus used to wear the saffron dhoti in public life, and to an extent, the saffron dhoti had become a crucial part of the religious piety of Hindu men and a religious symbol of mobility among Hindus. Through understanding the process of making meaning and other apparatus for political mobilization, this article argues that the ideological differences between right-wing Hindu nationalist organizations and Communist party does not exist at microlevel village politics, where there is a crucial similarity between political parties in mobilizing people and other activities of politics in a social democratic system.
En examinant le cas de la ville d’Ibadan, au sud-ouest du Nigéria, à l’époque coloniale tardive (1947-1957), l’auteure se concentre sur l’analyse des mobilisations collectives féminines, angle d’attaque privilégié pour saisir la manière dont les femmes s’organisent afin de négocier une autonomie majeure dans le champ à la fois socioéconomique et politique. L’auteure prête attention particulièrement à la complexité de ces négociations quand ces dernières impliquent une remise en cause des assignations de genre propres à cette époque étudiée et, notamment, d’une féminité conçue autour des fonctions sociales de gardiennes du foyer, de mères et d’épouses. Les stratégies d’action et les discours déployés par les femmes sont analysés en montrant les domaines où elles ont réussi à endiguer leurs difficultés et à atteindre la visibilité recherchée, mais aussi ceux où elles ont dû se résoudre à accepter des logiques sociales encore trop enracinées pour être bouleversées.
Given the great importance that all society attach to the body, regarding its conceptualization as well as the criteria for its social presentation, it is not surprising at all that the body occupies a central place in the processes of colonization and colonial policies. This article, based on the new approaches of postcolonial studies, as well as on anthropological and sociological theory on the body in general, discusses the relationship we can establish between coloniality and the social presentation of the body. Drawing on concrete cases of European colonization in Africa, the article focuses on practices related to the use of clothing as well as body modification. If the establishment of identities is crucial for building a hierarchical social order, these specific aspects of the social presentation of the body have had an important role in subalternization processes, the very notion of savage being one of the clearest examples.
Dada la gran importancia que toda sociedad otorga al cuerpo, tanto a su conceptualización como a los criterios para su presentación social, no es de extrañar que el cuerpo ocupe un lugar central en los procesos de colonización y las políticas coloniales. En este artículo se analiza la relación que podemos establecer entre colonialidad y presentación social del cuerpo, sirviéndonos para ello de los nuevos enfoques de los estudios postcoloniales, así como de la teoría antropológica y sociológica sobre el cuerpo en general. A partir de casos concretos de la colonización europea en África, el artículo se centra especialmente en las prácticas relativas al uso de indumentaria, así como a las modificaciones corporales. Si el establecimiento de identidades es crucial para construir un orden social jerarquizado, estos aspectos concretos de la presentación social del cuerpo han tenido un papel relevante en los procesos de subalternización, siendo la misma noción de salvaje uno de los ejemplos más claros para ello.
National days are powerful moments of commemoration that aim at renewing the citizens' bonds to the nation and the state. In order to be successful, public rituals need to draw large audiences, and their ceremonial design therefore has to be adapted to suit the masses, employing elements of popular culture and everyday forms of nationhood. Despite drawing its significance from the declaration of independence in 1960, however, Gabon's independence jubilee was less concerned with history and commemoration than with celebrating the state and the nation in the present. The ceremonial design of Gabon's jubilee featured intensive preparations, official ceremonies, popular festivities and symbolic politics. In this article, I look at why history and commemoration played such an unimportant role during the celebrations and how Gabon's jubilee organisers included official as well as popular forms of nationhood to assure the population's participation.
Download article from publisher here: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/pfdCfEAdiYMjhyq9QaZX/full#.UkLq_xa8_ww
Differences between Great Lakes Algonquians and their colonizers in the meanings and values of dress was not simply a matter of different symbolic meanings for the coded elements. Rather, for Algonquians, the whole realm of the visual played a lesser role in the construction, maintenance and negotiation of identities than it did for the colonizers. Whereas nineteenth century British and Americans “read” dress to ascertain identities, including moral character, occupation and class, with a few notable exceptions, Great Lakes Algonquians relied instead upon behavior as a primary indicator of identity. The meanings and values humans attribute to dress are linked to the economic and social structures of their production and distribution. These structures provide the basis for the modes of perception through which people conceive “selves” located in their physical and cognitive environments. For humans, as corporeal beings with subsistence needs, human-animal relations play a major role in these processes.
In an environment in which the globalization affects numerous people in a direct way, in which quality decides over rapid business and in which individual partnerships are more important and long-lasting than narrow-minded price discussions, the strategy for specified high quality Austrian Embroideries is becoming more important.
The motivation for this project is based on learning from history of more than 500 years of trading with textiles between West Africa and Europe. Still today, there are the same factors and mechanisms used for doing business. New things are as well absorbed instantly and transformed into the existing tradition. Also fashion is a typical western phenomenon; the things which are counting in the African world are the traditional ones. Traditional clothing still is a symbol of status, reputation, wealth, etc. Furthermore money for high qualitative and valuable products is still available than ever in this world. But the product itself must be developed, marketed and sold in a 100% true-package to the customer. Therefore, copied, cheap, low quality and secondhand textiles are only a way to be “decorated” in the correct cultural way even for people with little money. One of the only existing USPs of Europe is the richness of creativity. In this project, creativity is the main driver for staying in front of the competitors in the high-end African embroidery market.
The project objectives therefore are the exploration of the niche for Austrian Embroideries, to recognize the key factors of designing embroideries for different African cultures and to identify the key factors for trading in West Africa.
This first-time documentation, financed by the country Vorarlberg and the “Vorarlberger Stickereiwirtschaft”, the methodology is divided into three levels: Yesterday – Today – Tomorrow. The “Yesterday” part is developed based on existing literature in the fields of ethnography, cultural aspects, religion, art, strategy and marketing. This is followed by the “Today” part, which is a concentration on the actual situation in Vorarlberg, Europe, Africa, Asia and Near Middle East done in a qualitative way (e.g. observation, interviews, and photo documentation) directly in West Africa. Finally, the “Tomorrow” part consists of the combination of specific challenges for the Austrian Embroideries in West Africa as well as international best practices which lead to a positioning for the Austrian Embroideries and thereof important project propositions.
This project can contribute to new knowledge by developing a research model in the future for specific high-end products. The conclusions derived from this model could be the recognizing of the importance of the eye-level, the awareness of the customers´ background in nation, religion, tradition, and the usage of the customers language to market the niche of the product successfully with different marketing activities.