People often wear their causes on their t-shirts, in their choice of traditional attire or other garments, or by way of specific costumes, pieces of jewellery or particular accessories. In Was it something I wore? Dress; identity; materiality, the contributors explore the construction and performance of personal and social identities. The essays point to the significance of dress as material culture in social science research not only in their content but also in their focus on a variety of methodologies including memory work, visual studies, autoethnography, object biographies and other forms of textual analysis.
The framing question, Was it something I wore? is central to the many dress questions the book raises; questions that challenge the socio-political status quo. To what extent does dress visually signify the construction of a chosen identity and a chosen performance? How does dress position the body and identity in different social and cultural spaces? How does dress signify oppression and/or liberation for women and how might this differ for men? What is the role of dress in the constructions of schooling and contemporary childhood? In its exploration of these and other questions, Was it something I wore? addresses a variety of pertinent social issues that confront communities in southern Africa.
Product information
List of tables and figures
Acknowledgements
Acronyms and abbreviations
SECTION 1: DRESS, IDENTITY AND METHOD
- Reconfiguring dress
Claudia Mitchell, Relebohile Moletsane and Kathleen Pithouse - 'White' women in 'black' clothing: Overtures towards Africanness in dress in a South Africa context
Juliette Leeb-du Toit - Stories fluttering in the wind: How clotheslines write our lives
Hourig Attarian - Take a picture: Photographs, dress, gender and self-study
Ann Smith - Aesthetics and identity in contemporary South African fashion
Desiree LewisSECTION 2: ACCESSORISING DEMOCRACY
- Gender and the politics of the Basotho blanket
Mathabo Khau - Ayashisa amateki: Converse All Stars and other fashion items in the making of African masculinities
Kopano Ratele - Do clothes make a (wo)man? Exploring the role of dress in shaping South African domestic workers' identities
Sithabile Ntombela - A loud silence: The history of funeral dress among the Ndau of Zimbabwe
Marshall Tamuka Maposa - Dressing sex/ wearing a condom: Exploring social constructions of sexuality through a social semiotic analysis of the condom
Ran Tao and Claudia MitchellSECTION 3: DRESSING TO LEARN/LEARNING TO DRESS
- Who wears the trousers here? Women teachers and the politics of gender and the dress code in South African schools
Pontso Moorosi - Was it something she wore? Gender-based violence and the policing of the place of girls in the school space
Naydene de Lange - The gender politics of the school uniform
Nolutho Diko - The perfect matric dance dress
Linda van Laren - 'Angeke ngibe isitabane': The perceived relationship between dress and sexuality among young African men at the University of KwaZulu-Natal
Thabo Msibi - 'Khangela amankengane': The role of dress amongst rural extension workers in KwaZulu-Natal
Bongiwe MkhizeSECTION 4: DRESSING FOR SOCIAL CHANGE
- Wearing our hearts on our sleeve: The t-shirt and the South African activist agenda
Relebohile Moletsane and Peliwe Lolwana - The art of representation versus dressing to be invisible: Who am I dressing for in contemporary Rwanda?
Eliane Ubalijoro - Rewriting the script: Drag, dress and the body politic
Crawl Evans and Robert J. Balfour - Sari stories: Fragmentary images of 'Indian woman'
Nyna Amin and Devarakshanam Govinden - Personal adornment and creative process as micro-resistance
Marlene de Beer
References
Contributors
Index
