Fabrics of Indianness
The Exchange and Consumption of Clothing in Transnational Guyanese Hindu Communities
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Beschreibung
This book describes how Guyanese Hindus recreate Indian ethnic identity in contemporary Guyana and examines how Hindu traditions have been transformed in this multi-religious and multi-ethnic society. By illustrating the exchange and consumption of clothing, the book demonstrates that the practices of wearing and gifting clothes materialize and visualize relationships. The significant outward migration of Guyanese to North America has resulted in substantial international gift exchange and transnational rituals. Applying the concept of translocality, this book demonstrates that different localities continue to influence transnational networks and socio-cultural practices. It provides a study of migration that emphasizes various aspects of material and visual closeness, conceptualizing the notion of touch.
This book describes how Guyanese Hindus recreate Indian ethnic identity in contemporary Guyana and examines how Hindu traditions have been transformed in this multi-religious and multi-ethnic society. By illustrating the exchange and consumption of clothing, the book demonstrates that the practices of wearing and gifting clothes materialize and visualize relationships. The significant outward migration of Guyanese to North America has resulted in substantial international gift exchange and transnational rituals. Applying the concept of translocality, this book demonstrates that different localities continue to influence transnational networks and socio-cultural practices. It provides a study of migration that emphasizes various aspects of material and visual closeness, conceptualizing the notion of touch.
Autor*in
Sinah Theres Kloß
Themen in »Fabrics of Indianness«
Indo-Guyanese culture Material culture ethnography migration family community translocality Indian wear post-colonial studies Kali-Mai Puja
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“This book is a deeply insightful, well-researched, and thoughtful multi-sited ethnographical study of the ‘materiality’ of Indo-Guyanese cultural, diasporic and religious identity. Weaving together diverse first-person testimonials, participant observations and ethnographic interviews that are anchored in Guyana's complex history of migration, transnationality, race relations, social hierarchies, and cultural difference, Kloß embroiders a rich tapestry of ‘Indian Wear’ as a marker of Guyanese-Hindu traditions. A significant contribution to the field of Caribbean Studies and Material Culture Studies.” (Brinda J. Mehta, Germaine Thompson Professor of French and Francophone Studies, Mills College, USA)
“In this fascinating ethnographic study of a trans-local community in Guyana, Kloß shows how intimacy, touch, and exchange are established between Guyanese Hindus and the Indo-Guyanese diaspora through the sending and receiving of Indian style clothing. The transnational exchange of garments creates a kind of distant proximity through the material touching of bodies, textiles, and deities, while also distancing Guyanese Hindus from both ‘African’ Guyanese and from ‘Indian Indians’. This intimate perspective on women’s trans-local practices of religious community and familial fashioning brings to light exciting new ways of thinking about mobility, materiality, place-making, and embodied meanings and actions amongst dispersed migrants. It is an important contribution to the literature on transnationalism, material culture, modernity, and identity in the Caribbean.” (Mimi Sheller, Professor of Sociology and Director, Center for Mobilities Research and Policy, Drexel University, USA)
“This study is a fascinating journey into the complex management of ritual and everyday objects, senses and performance, as they shift across the various locally emplaced and transnationally spread channels of the Hindu diaspora between Guyana, New York, and South India. This is an eloquent document of theoretically and empirically solid and yet innovative ethnological research on the many layers of ‘Indian wear’.” (Christiane Brosius, Professor of Anthropology, Heidelberg Center for Transcultural Studies, Heidelberg University, USA)
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