TRANSNATIONAL BIOGRAPHIES AND LOCAL MEANINGS - USED CLOTHING PRACTICES IN LUSAKA

Drawing on preliminary field research in Zambia in 1992 and 1993 into the rapidly expanding trade in and consumption of used clothing import ed from the West, this paper examines some methodological questions th at arise from research-in-progress into the changing local appropriati ons of used clothing in Zambia. Because the processes that converge in this topic are not tied to any fixed locale, but call for contextuali zation in both politicoeconomic and local cultural terms, the shape of this research project is influenced by broader political changes in t he region and beyond it as well as by paradigmatic shifts in accounts of local-global relationships. Granting used clothing a history in whi ch what becomes of it does not inhere in its commodity status as a Wes tern cast-off, but is a result of what people have made with it and of it, investing and divesting it of meanings, this paper explores how u sed clothing assumes meanings as it becomes embedded in a variety of c ontexts, particularly in the capital city of Lusaka.