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This volume examines the dynamic relationship between the body, clothing, and identity in sub-Saharan Africa and raises questions that have previously been directed almost exclusively to a Western and urban context. Unusual in its treatment of the body surface as a critical frontier in the production and authentification of identity, Clothing and Difference shows how the body and its adornment have been used to construct and contest social and individual identities in Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Kenya, and other African societies during both colonial and post-colonial times.Grounded in the insights of anthropology and history and influenced by developments in cultural studies, these essays investigate the relations between the personal and the public, and between ideas about the self and those about the family, gender, and national groups. They explore the bodily and material creation of the changing identities of women, spirits, youths, ancestors, and entrepreneurs through a consideration of topics such as fashion, spirit possession, commodity exchange, hygiene, and mourning.By taking African societies as its focus, Clothing and Difference demonstrates that factors considered integral to Western social development—heterogeneity, migration, urbanization, transnational exchange, and media representation—have existed elsewhere in different configurations and with different outcomes. With significance for a wide range of fields, including gender studies, cultural studies, art history, performance studies, political science, semiotics, economics, folklore, and fashion and textile analysis/design, this work provides alternative views of the structures underpinning Western systems of commodification, postmodernism, and cultural differentiation.Contributors. Misty Bastian, Timothy Burke, Hildi Hendrickson, Deborah James, Adeline Masquelier, Elisha Renne, Johanna Schoss, Brad Weiss

#SBIB:39A5 --- #SBIB:39A73 --- #SBIB:309H53 --- #SBIB:316.7C121 --- Kunst, habitat, materiële cultuur en ontspanning --- Etnografie: Afrika --- Niet-verbale communicatie --- Cultuursociologie: gedragspatronen, levensstijl --- Clothing and dress --- Human body --- Identity (Psychology) --- History --- Psychological aspects. --- Social aspects --- Personal identity --- Body, Human --- Apparel --- Clothes --- Clothing --- Clothing and dress, Primitive --- Dress --- Dressing (Clothing) --- Garments --- Psychological aspects --- Personality --- Self --- Ego (Psychology) --- Individuality --- Human beings --- Body image --- Human anatomy --- Human physiology --- Mind and body --- Beauty, Personal --- Manners and customs --- Fashion --- Undressing

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While the Western world adheres to a beauty ideal that says women can never be too thin, the semi-nomadic Moors of the Sahara desert have for centuries cherished a feminine ideal of extreme fatness. Voluptuous immobility is thought to beautify girls' bodies, hasten the onset of puberty, heighten their sexuality and ripen them for marriage. From the time of the loss of their first milk teeth, girls are directed to eat huge bowls of milk and porridge in one of the world's few examples of active female fattening. Based on fieldwork in an Arab village in Niger, 'Feeding Desire' analyses the meanings of women's fatness as constituted by desire, kinship, concepts of health, Islam, and the crucial social need to manage sexuality. By demonstrating how a particular beauty ideal can only be understood within wider social structures and cultural logics, the book also implicitly provides a new way of thinking about the ideal of slimness in late Western capitalism. Offering a reminder that an estimated 80% of theworld's societies prefer plump women, this gracefully written book is both a fascinating exploration of the nature of bodily ideals and a highly readable ethnography of a Saharan people.

Muslim women --- Women, Arab --- Overweight women --- Sex customs --- Body image in women --- Human body --- Musulmanes --- Femmes arabes --- Femmes obèses --- Vie sexuelle --- Image du corps chez la femme --- Corps humain --- Social aspects --- Azaouak Valley (Mali and Niger) --- Azaouak, Vallée de l' (Mali et Niger) --- Social life and customs. --- Moeurs et coutumes --- Niger --- Ethnology. Cultural anthropology --- Developmental psychology --- Human physiology --- Africa --- Mali --- Arab States --- #SBIB:316.7C121 --- #SBIB:39A73 --- #SBIB:39A9 --- Arab women --- Customs, Sex --- Human beings --- Sexual behavior --- Sexual practices --- Islamic women --- Women, Muslim --- Body, Human --- Cultuursociologie: gedragspatronen, levensstijl --- Etnografie: Afrika --- Medische antropologie / gezondheid / handicaps --- Axaouak (Mali and Niger) --- Azaouak (Mali and Niger) --- Azawagh Valley (Mali and Niger) --- Azawak Valley (Mali and Niger) --- Azeouak Valley (Mali and Niger) --- Oued Azaouak (Mali and Niger) --- Vallée de l'Azaouak (Mali and Niger) --- Vallée de l'Azawagh (Mali and Niger) --- Vallée de l'Azawak (Mali and Niger) --- Vallée de l'Azeouak (Mali and Niger) --- Arab states --- Manners and customs --- Moral conditions --- Sex --- Overweight persons --- Women --- Obesity in women --- Body image --- Human anatomy --- Mind and body --- Psychology --- Muslimahs --- Appearance --- Féminité --- Female body --- Book --- Anthropology