Dress Cultures in Zambia
Interwoven Histories, Global Exchanges, and Everyday Life

Explores both Zambian dress practices from the late-colonial period until the present and African contributions to globally circulating fashions.

Karen Tranberg Hansen (Author)

9781009350365, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 27 April 2023

237 pages
23.5 x 16 x 1.5 cm, 0.47 kg

'In this accessible, erudite, and thorough monograph, Karen Tranberg Hansen illuminates the cultural entrepreneurship through which Zambians have innovatively drawn on local knowledge, politics, and global influences to forge their sartorial culture since the colonial period to the present. Drawing on her own published and unpublished research on Zambia dating back to the early 1970s and more recently on scholarship of consumption, Hansen argues that this sartorial culture serves as a potent site on which Zambians have historically (re)negotiated class, race, and gender relations, as well as identity, status, and power. In projecting dress as a discursive space, her fascinating work showcases the centrality of sartorial practice to understanding socio-cultural and political change in Zambia and beyond. Hansen's new study will not only engage general readers, economists, historians, and students of consumption alike but, like her widely-acclaimed book, Salaula, it is also destined to become a classic contribution to the historiography of southern Africa as a whole.' Walima T. Kalusa, former Research Associate, Cambridge University

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.

List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Prologue: the global world of dress in Zambia
1. Dress practice as history
Part I. Dressing Well: 2. The migration nexus
3. Dressing for freedom: snapshot 1. The national fabric
Part II. Dress and Undress: 4. Dress, undress, body, and nation
5. Miniskirts and dangerous dress practice: snapshot 2. Chitenge
6. The dramaturgy of body politics: snapshot 3. Accessories
Part III. Fashionable Transformations: Chapter 7. Youth and urban cultures of consumption: snapshot 4. Salaula
Chapter 8. Fashioning demonstrative displays:snapshot 5. 'Chinese clothes'
Chapter 9. Dressing Zambian: snapshot 6. A digital fitting room
Conclusion
References
Index.

Subject Areas: African history [HBJH]