Was it something I wore?

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Dress Identity Materiality People often wear their causes on their t-shirts, in their choice of traditional attire or other garments, or through specific costumes, jewellery or particular accessories. Was it something I wore? Dress, identity, and materiality, the contributors explore the construction and performance of personal and social identities. The essays point to the significance of dress as material culture in social science research in their content and in their focus on various methodologies, including memory work, visual studies, autoethnography, object biographies and other forms of textual analysis. The framing question, Was it something I wore? is central to the many dress questions the book raises that challenge the socio-political status quo. To what extent does dress visually signify the construction of a chosen identity and performance? How does dress position the body and identity in different social and cultural spaces? How does dress signify oppression and/or liberation for women, and how might this differ for men? What is the role of dress in the constructions of schooling and contemporary childhood? In its exploration of these and other questions, Was it something I wore? Addresses a variety of pertinent social issues that confront communities in southern Africa.

List of tables and figures
Acknowledgements
Acronyms and abbreviations

SECTION 1: DRESS, IDENTITY AND METHOD

1. Reconfiguring dress
   Claudia Mitchell, Relebohile Moletsane and Kathleen Pithouse
2. ‘White’ women in ‘black’ clothing: Overtures towards Africanness in dress in a South Africa context
   Juliette Leeb-du Toit
3. Stories fluttering in the wind: How clotheslines write our lives
   Hourig Attarian
4. Take a picture: Photographs, dress, gender and self-study
   Ann Smith
5. Aesthetics and identity in contemporary South African fashion
   Desiree LewisSECTION 2: ACCESSORISING DEMOCRACY
6. Gender and the politics of the Basotho blanket
   Mathabo Khau
7. Ayashisa amateki: Converse All Stars and other fashion items in the making of African masculinities
   Kopano Ratele
8. Do clothes make a (wo)man? Exploring the role of dress in shaping South African domestic workers’ identities
   Sithabile Ntombela
9. A loud silence: The history of funeral dress among the Ndau of Zimbabwe
   Marshall Tamuka Maposa
10. Dressing sex/ wearing a condom: Exploring social constructions of sexuality through a social semiotic analysis of the condom
    Ran Tao and Claudia MitchellSECTION 3: DRESSING TO LEARN/LEARNING TO DRESS
11. Who wears the trousers here? Women teachers and the politics of gender and the dress code in South African schools
    Pontso Moorosi
12. Was it something she wore? Gender-based violence and the policing of the place of girls in the school space
    Naydene de Lange
13. The gender politics of the school uniform
    Nolutho Diko
14. The perfect matric dance dress
    Linda van Laren
15. ‘Angeke ngibe isitabane’: The perceived relationship between dress and sexuality among young African men at the University of KwaZulu-Natal
    Thabo Msibi
16. ‘Khangela amankengane’: The role of dress amongst rural extension workers in KwaZulu-Natal
    Bongiwe MkhizeSECTION 4: DRESSING FOR SOCIAL CHANGE
17. Wearing our hearts on our sleeve: The t-shirt and the South African activist agenda
    Relebohile Moletsane and Peliwe Lolwana
18. The art of representation versus dressing to be invisible: Who am I dressing for in contemporary Rwanda?
    Eliane Ubalijoro
19. Rewriting the script: Drag, dress and the body politic
    Crawl Evans and Robert J. Balfour
20. Sari stories: Fragmentary images of ‘Indian woman’
    Nyna Amin and Devarakshanam Govinden
21. Personal adornment and creative process as micro-resistance
    Marlene de Beer

References
Contributors
Index