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Key Words dressed body, material culture, consumption, clothing practice, style diversification
Abstract Clothing research has attracted renewed interest in anthropology over the past two decades, experiencing a florescence that had been kept within bounds by reigning theoretical paradigms. The works have been influenced by general explanatory shifts in anthropology, which inform disparate bodies of clothing research that otherwise have little unity. The most noticeable trend is a preoccupation with agency, practice, and performance that considers the dressed body as both subject in, and object of, dress practice. The turn to consumption as a site and process of meaning making is evident also in clothing research. Dress has been analyzed, by and large, as representing something else rather than something in its own right, although new efforts to reengage materiality suggest that this approach is changing. Little work has been done on clothing production issues, though some scholars examine the significance of dress in the context of the entire economic circuit and the unequal relationships between its actors.
INTRODUCTION
A rich literature on dress has appeared across the scientific and popular board in recent years. Active and creative engagements with apparel extend across disciplines into museum exhibitions where fashion is displayed as art. Several encyclopedias on clothing and fashion are forthcoming. The new wealth of academic scholarship includes articles, monographs, and edited collections with regional or topical foci. Fashion Theory, a new interdisciplinary journal, complements the scholarship of Costume, the journal of the Costume Society in the United Kingdom, and Dress, the journal of the Costume Society of America. Berg is publishing a new book series, Dress, Body, and Culture. Highly profiled international conferences on themes ranging from clothing and imperialism to fashion and consumption showcase dress scholarship.
Anthropology contributes to this growing body of research by giving new life to the study of clothing, which for a long time received only passing attention. Reigning theoretical paradigms are to blame for much of this neglect, making clothes an accessory in symbolic, structural, or semiotic explanations. As a result, any serious engagement with clothing itself has almost vanished. Since the late 1980s, anthropologists have set a new research agenda on clothing, placing the body surface at center stage. The chief inspirations for this shift are...