Panel
5. Transmitting Knowledges: Institutions, Objects and Practices
Nowadays, China has become the world's largest producer and trader of clothing and textiles, with its exports accounting for over one-third of the global total. Fashion products manufactured in China, including clothing, accessories, and textiles, flow into the African market due to their affordable prices, diverse varieties, and innovative designs, including relevant fashion products that either incorporate local cultural elements, Chinese cultural elements, or a combination of both. Therefore, understanding how local people perceive Chinese-manufactured fashion products, how they imagine the relationship between Chinese products and local fashion culture as well as ethnic identities, and how both sides engage in cross-cultural negotiations to promote dialogues are worth of exploring. Also, as a symbol of local cultural identity, the similarity between Chinese and African fashion lies in their differences from Western fashion "domestication". On this basis, localized imagination, as a manifestation of cultural negotiation becomes an important dimension for discussing the interaction of "South-South fashion". With online interview and ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Guangzhou, this study explores firstly about how do Africans imagine the relationship between Chinese fashion clothing and local fashion clothing, forming what kind of "localized imagination", and then discuss about what kinds of similarities and dialogues exist between China and Africa fashion cultures.
Shengjun Jin
University of Amsterdam, Netherlands