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2 results

  • 1 - Dress Practice as History

  • Karen Tranberg Hansen, Northwestern University, Illinois
  • Book:
    Dress Cultures in Zambia
    Published online:
    20 April 2023
    Print publication:
    27 April 2023, pp 5-18

  • Summary

    This book brings together African histories of consumption with their actors, performances, and spaces to explore how the dressed body serves as the point of contact between personal, very local experiences, and the broader global context. It draws on the author’s long-term anthropological research in Zambia and the Africanist and dress scholarship that frames it. Past and present across most of Africa, people have been and remain passionate about how they appear in public, and Zambia is no exception. Clothing helps people make history and socio-cultural change just as much as history helps drive their new dress practice and fashion cultures. Exploring the dress and fashion scene in relation to changes in the political and social setting reveals a surprising range of issues that have endured across history in Zambia. They converge on the dressed body and make the significance of a well-dressed appearance the heart of that story.

Dress Cultures in Zambia
  • Interwoven Histories, Global Exchanges, and Everyday Life
  • Karen Tranberg Hansen
  • Published online:
    20 April 2023
    Print publication:
    27 April 2023
  • Drawing on half-a-century of research in Zambia and regional scholarship, Karen Tranberg Hansen offers a vibrant history of changing dress practices from the late-colonial period to the present day. Exploring how the dressed body serves as the point of contact between personal, local, and global experiences, she argues that dress is just as central to political power as it is to personal style. Questioning the idea that the West led fashion trends elsewhere, Hansen demonstrates how local dress conventions appropriated western dress influences as Zambian and shows how Zambia contributed to global fashions, such as the colourful Chitenge fabric that spread across colonial trading networks. Brought to life with colour illustrations and personal anecdotes, this book spotlights dress not only as an important medium through which Zambian identities are negotiated, but also as a key reflector and driver of history.