| Description |
1 online resource |
| Contents |
Front Cover -- Titel -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of Figures -- Acknowledgements -- Part I: To Dress: Background and Perspectives -- The problem -- Scope of the approach -- The questions -- The outline -- Chapter 1 The Myth of the Naked Bushman -- Scientific racism and the exhibition of Bushmen -- Early Bushman ethnography -- Modern Bushman ethnography -- Chapter 2 How to Study Bushman Dress -- A definition of dress -- The significance of dress -- Pieces of dress: Lost and found -- Mix and match: A theoretical bricolage -- Research material -- A museal paradox |
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Part II: Dressed in Social Structure: The Bushman Dress of Dorothea Bleek -- Reconstructing the /auni dress -- Reconstructing the Basarwa dress -- Reconstructing the Naron dress -- Dressing 'the naked Bushman' -- Chapter 3 Field Notes and Diaries, 1911 and 1913 -- Words and sentences -- Kyky, Gordonia, 10 October to 21 November 1911 -- Kakia, Bechuanaland Protectorate, 23 June to 1 August 1913 -- Dressing 'the Bushman' -- Chapter 4 The South West Africa Expeditions, 1920-1921 and 1921-1922 -- OES beads and beadwork -- Skin-work -- Tattoos and cut marks |
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'Fragrant' necklaces and tortoiseshell containers -- Dress as social structure -- Part III: Dressed in Group Relations: The Bushman Dress of Louis Fourie -- The artefact collection -- The paper archive -- The photographs -- Chapter 5 Bushman Groups Materialised -- The ≠Ao-//ein -- The Naron -- The Nu-//ein -- The Hei-//om -- Photographing objects -- Photographing people -- Chapter 6 Dress Noted -- OES beads and beadwork -- Skin-work -- Tattoos and cut marks -- Necklaces/medicines -- Dress as group relations -- Part IV: Dressed as Told: Interpreting Dress Practices from /Xam Bushman Narratives |
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People of the archive -- The archive: Context and scholarly tradition -- Signifiers of dress -- Analytical concepts -- The narratives -- Chapter 7 Body Modifications: How to Live Life in a Sometimes-Unpredictable World -- 'Acting nicely' towards the Rain -- Dressed in Ssho /oa -- Chapter 8 The Embedded Properties of Clothing: Human and Animal Relations -- Becoming human, becoming animal -- Springbok sorcerers -- Chapter 9 Identities in the Making: Being Dressed -- The narratives -- /Xam dress as social relations -- Conclusion: A World of Dress -- The questions -- The results -- Some implications |
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Epilogue -- Appendix 1 Note on Nomenclature -- Bushmen, San, Basarwa and Khoisan -- Different names for the same group of people -- Appendix 2 Map of Southern Africa -- Bibliography -- Unpublished sources -- Online sources -- Literature -- Index -- Back Cover |
| Summary |
To dress is a uniquely human experience, but practices and meanings of dress vary greatly among people. In a Western cultural tradition, the practice of dressing 'properly' has for centuries distinguished 'civilised' people from 'savages'. Through travel literature and historical ethnographic descriptions of the Bushmen of southern Africa, such perceptions and prejudices have made their mark also on the modern research tradition. Because Bushmen were widely considered to be 'nearly naked' the study of dress has played a limited part in academic writings on Bushman culture. In Dress as Social Relations Vibeke Maria Viestad challenges this myth of the nearly naked Bushman and provides an interdisciplinary study of Bushman dress, as it is represented in the archives and material culture of historical Bushman communities. Maintaining a critical perspective, Viestad provides an interpretation of the significance of dress for historical Bushman people. Dress, she argues, formed an embodied practice of social relations between humans, animals and other powerful beings of the Bushman world; moreover, this complex and meaningful practice was intimately related to subsistence strategies and social identity. The historical collections under scrutiny present a wide variety of research material representing different aspects of the bodily practice of dress. Whereas the Bleek & Lloyd archive of oral myths and narratives has become renowned for its great research potential, the artefact collections of Dorothea Bleek and Louis Fourie are much less known and have not earlier been published in a richly illustrated and comprehensive way. Dress as Social Relations is aimed at scholars and students of archaeology, anthropology, material culture studies, dress studies, ethnographic studies, museology, culture historical studies and African studies, but will also be of interest to people of descendant communities |
| Notes |
Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 19 Jun 2019) |
| Subject |
San (African people) -- Clothing
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Clothing and dress -- Social aspects -- Africa
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SOCIAL SCIENCE -- General.
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Clothing and dress -- Social aspects
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Africa
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
9781776141920 |
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177614192X |
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