1st Edition

The Art of Clothing: A Pacific Experience

Edited By Susan Kuchler, Graeme Were Copyright 2005
    202 Pages
    by Routledge

    202 Pages
    by Routledge

    The Art of Clothing: A Pacific Experience is a collection of richly textured and tremendously engaging empirical studies of cloth and clothing in colonial and post-colonial Pacific contexts. By challenging readers to reconsider the very nature of the materiality of clothing, the editors productively situate this volume at the intersection of a number of ongoing interdisciplinary projects that are coalescing around an interest in cloth and clothing. The book as a whole speaks lucidly to issues of current concern in a wide range of academic fields - including cultural studies, material culture, Pacific history, art history, history of religions, and museum studies.

    Chapter 1 1I am grateful to Susanne Küchler and Graeme Were for their invitation to take on this topic, and to Daniel Miller, Judith Irvine, Adela Pinch and Christopher Pinney for their comments and provocations., Webb Keane; Part I Clothing as the Art of Innovation; Chapter 2 Dressing for Transition: Weddings, Clothing and Change in Vanuatu, Lissant Bolton; Chapter 3 Objects of Conversion: Concerning the Transfer of Sulu to Fiji, Chloe Colchester; Chapter 4 Elite Clothing and the Social Fabric of Pre-Colonial Tahiti, Anne D’Alleva; Chapter 5 Under Wraps: An Unpursued Avenue of Innovation, Michael O’Hanlon; Part II Clothing and the Performance of Translation; Chapter 6 Surface Attraction: Clothing and the Mediation of Maori/European Relationships, Elizabeth Cory-Pearce; Chapter 7 Disco, Dog’S Teeth and Women in Uniforms: Modern Mekeo Dress Codes, Bente Wolff; Chapter 8 Dressing and Undressing the Bride and Groom at a Rotuman Wedding, Vilsoni Hereniko; Chapter 9 ‘Doubleness of Meaning’: Pasifika Clothing, Camp and Couture, Lisa Taouma; Part III Fashioning Modernities; Chapter 10 Translations: Texts and Textiles in Papua New Guinea, Paul Sharrad; Chapter 11 Dress and Address: First Nations Self-Fashioning and The 1860 Royal Tour of Canada, Ruth B Phillips; Part IV Epilogue; Chapter 12 1This is the text, more or less as spoken, of a paper delivered to a conference organised by Susanne Küchler and Graeme Were as part of the ESRC funded project on ‘Clothing the Pacific: A Study of the Nature of Innovation’ (Lissant Bolton, Chloe Colchester, Susanne Küchler, Nicholas Thomas, Graeme Were). I am most grateful to the organisers for the invitation, and for spurring me to write this account. The title does not really reflect the theme of the paper which eventually took over., Marilyn Strathern;

    Biography

    Edited by Kuchler, Susan; Were, Graeme