Salaula : The World of Secondhand Clothing and Zambia

Rating:
Summary: Consumers as active participants
Review: The author, an anthropologist, explores the phenomenon of second-hand clothes being exported from the West into Zambia, where they are sold on as "luxury goods". She argues against the idea that this is a North-South neo-colonial or aid transaction, asserting that Zambians are not just passive recipients of recycled clothes, but active consumers making informed (or at least broadly understood) cultural choices. She also explores how clothes, as cultural signifiers, give the wearer meaning in the specific Zambian social context. She also identifies reasons why people choose salaula and its impact on culture and "modernization" in Zambia Hansen explains the whole commodity chain of procurement, distribution and consumption of second-hand clothes. The reader may be surprised to learn that clothes given away to charities may be sold to exporters for resale in developing countries at all.

Rating:
Summary: Consumers as active participants
Review: The author, an anthropologist, explores the phenomenon of second-hand clothes being exported from the West into Zambia, where they are sold on as "luxury goods". She argues against the idea that this is a North-South neo-colonial or aid transaction, asserting that Zambians are not just passive recipients of recycled clothes, but active consumers making informed (or at least broadly understood) cultural choices. She also explores how clothes, as cultural signifiers, give the wearer meaning in the specific Zambian social context. She also identifies reasons why people choose salaula and its impact on culture and "modernization" in Zambia Hansen explains the whole commodity chain of procurement, distribution and consumption of second-hand clothes. The reader may be surprised to learn that clothes given away to charities may be sold to exporters for resale in developing countries at all.