Identity and Authenticity in Global-Local Hybrid Cultural Products: Focusing on African Wax Prints

This article examines the issue of whether hybridised cultural products created in the colonial Western-centric global-local world system can retain local cultural identity and authenticity through the case of African wax. African wax, a wax-printed fabric, is a raw-dye printed cotton fabric produced in factories by European textile companies based on batik, a traditional Indonesian fabric. It is a hybrid cultural product that is neither a traditional African fabric nor produced in Africa, but has acquired the attributes of African culture through its consumption in Africa. According to the conventional view that local culture should be locally generated and produced with originality, uniqueness, and purity, it is difficult to call hybridised wax prints made in Europe during the colonial period as African local culture. Therefore, based on transcultural theory, which interprets colonial local culture from a post-Western perspective, we found that the agency, creativity, and tradition of African local culture in the consumption process transformed the Indonesian-style European wax into African wax and made the wax print an African local culture. Furthermore, we suggest that if authenticity as a commodity is based on originality and genuineness in the production process, then authenticity as a culture should be based on usability, functionality, knowledge, and spirituality in the consumption process, so that Africans as consumers can recognise the cultural products created by wax prints, just as Europeans as producers naturally accept new cultural products such as fashion shows and exhibitions that reappropriate Africanness created by Africans. African wax is an important example of how hybrid cultural products created through the dynamic process of global-local production and consumption during the colonial period can define local cultural identity and authenticity, and what it takes to become new local global cultural contents today.