Dressed to Kill

Clothing as Technology of the Body in the Civil War in Sierra Leone

Bibliographic Data

ID2390937
AuthorsP Richards (0000-0001-5813-0228, Technology & Agrarian Development Group, Wageningen University, The Netherlands, corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume14
Issue4
Pages495-512
Publication date2009-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Material Culture (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1359-1835 • E-ISSN: 1460-3586
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1359183509345950
OpenAlexW2150359637
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited22

Technology is often defined in terms of tools or machines but, in this article, it is treated as the human capacity to make. The author focuses on clothing as an instance of making in war. Specific attention is paid to the junction between the power to make (or unmake) and the social and ritual capacities for regulation through which making is governed. In this sense, the study is intended as a contribution to a revived interest in the incomplete Durkheimian project on elementary forms of technique, and techniques of the body in particular. The case-study material derives from the civil war in Sierra Leone (1991-2002) in which dress was as important an aspect of making war as weaponry. Various functions and social and material entailments of battle dress are described and differentiated, and the central role of magic for understanding clothing (and technology more generally) is underlined

Consumption · Humanities and Social Sciences · Marxism and Critical Theory · Philosophical and Theoretical Analysis

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