Abstract
Drawing on preliminary field research in Zambia in 1992 and 1993 into the rapidly expanding trade in and consumption of used clothing imported from the West, this paper examines some methodological questions that arise from research-in-progress into the changing local appropriations of used clothing in Zambia. Because the processes that converge in this topic are not tied to any fixed locale, but call for contextualization in both politicoeconomic and local cultural terms, the shape of this research project is influenced by broader political changes in the region and beyond it as well as by paradigmatic shifts in accounts of local-global relationships. Granting used clothing a history in which what becomes of it does not inhere in its commodity status as a western cast-off, but is a result of what people have made with it and of it, investing and divesting it of meanings, this paper explores how used clothing assumes meanings as it becomes embedded in a variety of contexts, particularly in the capital city of Lusaka.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 131-145 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| Journal | Journal of Southern African Studies |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Mar 1995 |
Funding
1 This paper is based on research undertaken in Zambia, June to September 1992, funded by the University Research Grants Committee of Northwestern University and on consultancy work in Zambia and Zimbabwe, conducted in July and August 1993, for the Danish International Development Agency. I am grateful to Use Mwanza of the Institute for African Studies, University of Zambia, for keeping my clipping files about used clothing expanding and to Mette Shayne of the Africana Collection at Northwestern University's library for extensive assistance with reference work. And I wish to acknowledge the influence of suggestions made by Paul J. Freund, Jeremy Gould and Maria Grosz-Ngate on the development of some of the arguments in this paper.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Geography, Planning and Development
- Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
- Sociology and Political Science