Clothing as Material Culture

Description

This book puts the material back into clothing.
In recent years social scientists have become increasingly interested in theories of fashion, but have rarely directly addressed the material qualities of clothing. By contrast, traditional studies of dress have focused on textiles but often neglect the larger cultural context within which dress becomes consumed as clothing.
This book fills a major gap by combining these two ‘camps’ through an expressly material culture approach to clothing. In sustained case studies, Kchler and Miller argue that cloth and clothing are living, vibrant parts of culture and the body. From the recycling of cloth in Africa and India and the use of pattern in the Pacific, to the history of ‘wash and wear’ and why women wear the wrong clothes to restaurants in London, this book shows the considerable advantage gained by seamlessly combining material and social aspects of dress and textiles.

Dr. Susanne Kchler is a Material Culture Masters Tutor in the Department of Anthropology, University College London.
Daniel Miller is a Professor of Material Culture in the Department of Anthropology, University College London, and the author of numerous books, including The Sari, with Mukulika Bannerjee.

Introduction–Daniel Miller * Why are there Quilts in Polynesia?–Susanne Küchler * Nga Aho Tipuna (Ancestral Threads): Maori Cloaks from New Zealand–Amiria Henare * Relative Imagery: Patterns of Response to the Revival of Archaic Chiefly Dress in Fiji–Chloe Colchester * Pattern, Efficacy And Enterprise: On the Fabrication of Connections In Melanesia–Graeme Were * Looking Good, Feeling Right: Aesthetics of the Self–Sophie Woodward * The Other Half: the Material Culture of New Fibres–Kaori O’Connor * Aesthetics, Ethics and the Politics of the Turkish Headscarf–Özlem Sandikci and Güliz Ger * Cloth that Lies: the Secrets of Recycling in India–Lucy Norris * From Thrift to Fashion: Materiality and Aesthetics in Dress Practices in Zambia–Karen Tranberg Hansen

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