Clothing as Material Culture

This study of mass-consumption shows how a focus on single fibre can yield so much about the fabric of social change.This book shows how clothing often lies at the intersection between individual, bodily experience and the larger forces at work in the world. The book reveals as much about academic fashion as it does about the materiality of clothing. Crafts Magazine : Decorative Applied Arts, No.197 November/December 2005 review by Pamela Johnson One of the best features of this book is the quality of the data that the authors have drawn from various sources, including fieldwork, museum collections, photographs, and, in one remarkable case, the corporate archives of DuPont. Technolgy and Culture Vol 47, October 2006

Dr. Susanne Kuchler is a Material Culture Masters Tutor in the Department of Anthropology, University College London. Daniel Miller is a Professor of Material Culture in the Department of Anthropology, University College London, and the author of numerous books, including The Sari, with Mukulika Bannerjee.

Introduction--Daniel Miller, University College London * Looking good: feeling right-aesthetics of the self--Sophie Woodward, University College London * The other half: the material culture of new fibres--Kaori O'Connor, University College London * Aesthetics, Ethics and the Politics of the Turkish Headscarf--zlem Sandikci, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey and Gliz Ger, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey * Cloth that lies: the secrets of recycling in India--Lucy Norris, University College London * From Thrift to Fashion: Materiality and Aesthetics in Dress Practices in Zambia--Karen Tranberg Hansen, Northwestern University * Nga Aho Tipuna (ancestral threads): Maori cloaks from New Zealand--Amiria Henare, University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology * Relative Imagery: Patterns of Response to the Revival of Archaic Chiefly Dress in Fiji--Chlo Colchester, University College London * Pattern, Efficacy And Enterprise: On the Fabrication of Connections In Melanesia-- Graeme Were, Goldsmiths College, London * Why are there quilts in Polynesia?--Susanne Kchler, University College London