Costume and Identity

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2106969
AutoresHilda Kuper (0000-0002-8952-0023, University of California, Los Angeles, autor de correspondencia)
Año1973
Volumen15
Número3
Páginas348-367
Fecha de publicación1973-06-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaComparative Studies in Society and History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0010-4175 • E-ISSN: 1475-2999
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0010417500007143
OpenAlexW2171859233
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas44
Referencias citadas11

Clothing is a bundle of cultural symbols that has been dealt withsomewhat eclectically and indiscriminately in the anthropological wash.Some writers have speculated on the origins of clothing, stressing suchqualities in human nature as modesty and vanity; others, more materiallyoriented, have emphasized utility; others again have listed separategarments, the materials of which they were made, and the techniquesemployed; and some have paid attention to broader historical and sociological dimensions. In a pioneering study, Kroeber used documentary evidence to correlate fluctuations in women's fashions (using indices of skirt length, width of waist, and depth of decolletage) with major social and political upheavals (Kroeber, 1919, 1940), but perhaps because of the nature of his data, as well as his particular orientation, he made no reference to the persons involved, and overlooked internal cultural variations and conflicts of style. These issues received more attention from scholars trained in the Malinowski tradition of fieldwork, and they described clothing worn by different persons in different situations; those who worked in areas where people of different cultures were brought in contact in the colonial situation indicated the meaning of changes in style of clothing over time. General textbooks draw attention to the correlation between clothing and social status and to such facts as the cost of clothing, its technology and its aesthetics

Crafts, Textile, and Design · Fashion and Cultural Textiles · Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies