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"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
List of contents
Figures
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
About the author
Hildi Hendrickson, ed.
Summary
Examines 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.
