Co-constructing fashion in a South–South context: selling Chinese-made garments and textiles in Mozambique

IF 1.3 Q2 ANTHROPOLOGY Critical African Studies Pub Date : 2022-11-29 DOI:10.1080/21681392.2022.2133735
Johanna von Pezold
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Abstract

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Mozambique (in 2017 and 2019) and China (in 2019), this paper looks at the ways that Chinese garments and textiles are presented and promoted as being fashionable in everyday business interactions in Mozambique. It explores how fashion is mediated in informal, South–South contexts that are largely detached from Euro–American fashion systems. Several different groups make use of their own specific strengths and advantages – be it access to capital and networks, long-term trading experience, business expertise, or an intimate knowledge of local tastes and trends – to sell Chinese-made clothes, shoes, and fabrics in Mozambique. These groups include Indian traders, West African individual traders, Chinese entrepreneurs, Chinese textile companies, and since recently, young Mozambicans, including women, who see the availability and affordability of Chinese-made products as an opportunity to start their own businesses. These diverse actors partly complement and partly contradict each other in mediating the fashionability of Chinese-made products, while jointly constructing them as fashion. Through this unintentional co-construction, the groups selling Chinese-made garments and textiles in Mozambique carve out market niches for themselves, stimulate local dress culture, and diversify the way fashion mediation is understood, adding a South–South perspective to it.
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在南南背景下共同构建时尚:在莫桑比克销售中国制造的服装和纺织品
基于在莫桑比克(2017年和2019年)和中国(2019年)进行的民族志实地调查,本文研究了中国服装和纺织品在莫桑比克日常商业互动中作为时尚呈现和推广的方式。它探讨了时尚是如何在非正式的南南背景下进行调解的,这些背景在很大程度上脱离了欧美时尚体系。几个不同的集团利用自己的特殊优势——资本和网络、长期贸易经验、商业专业知识或对当地品味和趋势的深入了解——在莫桑比克销售中国制造的服装、鞋子和面料。这些群体包括印度贸易商、西非个体贸易商、中国企业家、中国纺织公司,最近,包括妇女在内的莫桑比克年轻人将中国制造的产品的可获得性和可负担性视为创业的机会。这些不同的角色在协调中国制造产品的时尚性的过程中,既相互补充,又相互矛盾,同时共同将其构建为时尚。通过这种无意的合作,在莫桑比克销售中国制造的服装和纺织品的集团为自己开辟了市场利基,激发了当地的服装文化,并使人们对时尚中介的理解方式多样化,为其增添了南南视角。
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来源期刊
Critical African Studies
Critical African Studies Arts and Humanities-Arts and Humanities (all)
CiteScore
3.00
自引率
0.00%
发文量
19
期刊介绍: Critical African Studies seeks to return Africanist scholarship to the heart of theoretical innovation within each of its constituent disciplines, including Anthropology, Political Science, Sociology, History, Law and Economics. We offer authors a more flexible publishing platform than other journals, allowing them greater space to develop empirical discussions alongside theoretical and conceptual engagements. We aim to publish scholarly articles that offer both innovative empirical contributions, grounded in original fieldwork, and also innovative theoretical engagements. This speaks to our broader intention to promote the deployment of thorough empirical work for the purposes of sophisticated theoretical innovation. We invite contributions that meet the aims of the journal, including special issue proposals that offer fresh empirical and theoretical insights into African Studies debates.
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