1 - Dress Practice as History

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.