Paper short abstract:

Dress and cloth are vital creative mediums connecting West Africans in far-flung communities. For Mande language speakers in urban settings in Senegal and France, networks open access to cosmopolitan fashions as well as ‘traditional’ or natural materials, both resonant in performances of identity.

Paper long abstract:

In the interconnected fashion world of West Africa, technological and aesthetic changes occur in an ever more rapid cycle. In Dakar, Senegal, new materials from Europe and China flow in on container ships; new ideas and images circulate through popular and personal media; and new cloth decoration techniques flow out from Bamako, Mali.

Even for urban and diasporic West Africans, who can choose among many cosmopolitan fashions, certain cloths "can never be abandoned completely": cloths with medicinal or spiritual effects that are obligatory at certain key moments, for the execution of ceremonies, or the performance of identity. Increasingly, the means and knowledge for producing these cloths rests 'au village,' in rural or hinterland settings in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Senegal. Urbanites therefore depend on networked knowledge and on traders, family members, or their own travels to maintain access to these important cloths. At the same time, the sources of such 'traditional' pieces also bring the most prestigious current fashion material, the sought-after Malian bazin, mostly made in Bamako.

Based on fieldwork with Mande language speakers in Senegal and France, this presentation will explore the networks of exchange that keep cloths circulating among dispersed communities. I argue that these ambiguous dress objects mediate the experience(s) of globalization and embody cultural concepts of 'modern' and 'traditional,' 'here' and 'there,' which are always in formation.