Salaula: The World of Secondhand Clothing and Zambia
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Book Overview
When we donate our unwanted clothes to charity, we rarely think about what will happen to them: who will sort and sell them, and finally, who will revive and wear them. In this fascinating look at the multibillion dollar secondhand clothing business, Karen Tranberg Hansen takes us around the world from the West, where clothing is donated, through the salvage houses in North America and Europe, where it is sorted and compressed, to Africa, in this case, Zambia. There it enters the dynamic world of Salaula, a Bemba term that means "to rummage through a pile." Essential for the African economy, the secondhand clothing business is wildly popular, to the point of threatening the indigenous textile industry. But, Hansen shows, wearing secondhand clothes is about much more than imitating Western styles. It is about taking a garment and altering it to something entirely local, something that adheres to current cultural norms of etiquette. By unraveling how these garments becomes entangled in the economic, political, and cultural processes of contemporary Zambia, Hansen also raises provocative questions about environmentalism, charity, recycling, and thrift.
Format:Hardcover
Language:English
ISBN:0226315800
ISBN13:9780226315805
Release Date:August 2000
Publisher:University of Chicago Press
Length:314 Pages
Weight:1.19 lbs.
Dimensions:1.1" x 6.3" x 9.3"
Customer Reviews
1 rating
Consumers as active participants
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 23 years ago
The author, an anthropologist, explores the phenomenon of second-hand clothes being exported from the West into Zambia, where they are sold on as "luxury goods". She argues against the idea that this is a North-South neo-colonial or aid transaction, asserting that Zambians are not just passive recipients of recycled clothes, but active consumers making informed (or at least broadly understood) cultural choices. She also explores how clothes, as cultural signifiers, give the wearer meaning in the specific Zambian social context. She also identifies reasons why people choose salaula and its impact on culture and "modernization" in Zambia Hansen explains the whole commodity chain of procurement, distribution and consumption of second-hand clothes. The reader may be surprised to learn that clothes given away to charities may be sold to exporters for resale in developing countries at all.
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