Where the previous section has attempted to demonstrate how specific local practices have evolved from globally traded cloth historically, this section is examining how these local practices in turn have lead to a demand for similar shapes, colours and patterns to suit such practices. Consumer demand, it argues, has acted as an agency for design participation and has allowed people to indirectly shape material expressions appropriate for their cultural context. In doing so consumer demand has taken on an integral function in allowing people to gain cultural ownership of a product manufactured elsewhere.
A testament to the effects of Indian Ocean textile trade, The Spinning World invites the reader to consider import products not as a necessary obstruction to local production but as an inspiration and trigger to local production and innovation as well, calling it an ‘import-blending’ rather than a ‘substitution’. (Riello and Parthasarathi, 2009:9) The authors point out the importance of how consumer tastes and demands have shaped and influenced those import products significantly and are therefore very much part of the design process. Jeremy Presthold’s book, Domesticating the World, inspires to perceive consumer demand in Africa as an agency that has significantly contributed to the global shaping of material culture. His ‘insights into how objects, symbols and people were remade through their movement and the movement of others’ (Presthold, 2008:4) demonstrates how cultural interchange can be understood as a symbiosis of mutual adaptations. If material objects have shaped the cultural encounter with their users, then in turn, the users must have also shaped the nature of the material objects over time, as ‘culture is always tied to its materiality and is inseparable from it.’ (Kalay and Kvan, 2008:15).
This agency of consumer demand has been indirectly cultivated by some of the print fabric manufacturers and African importers. In Togo for example, the Dutch textile manufacturer ‘Vlisco’ has worked over decades to cultivate direct input from local women who bring their products to market. Known as ‘Mama (or Nana) Benz’ these women enjoy a considerable influence on translating local tastes and creating demand for specific designs (Hemmings, Interview with Roger Gerards, 2015). In Mozambique, some of the elder women sell their cloths which they consider to be ‘traditional’ to importers of print fabrics from India so that these designs can be copied and reproduced (Field research, 2016, II-MR-1.2.16). In this way consumers have played an active role in preserving cloth designs that were considered culturally relevant and valuable.
Global mass consumption
How then is this currently changing in light of global fashion trends meeting local cloth traditions in rural African communities? And what is the role of emerging technologies in populating these trends locally? In rural farming communities of southern Mozambique…continue reading
Consumer demand as agency
Where the previous section has attempted to demonstrate how specific local practices have evolved from globally traded cloth historically, this section is examining how these local practices in turn have lead to a demand for similar shapes, colours and patterns to suit such practices. Consumer demand, it argues, has acted as an agency for design participation and has allowed people to indirectly shape material expressions appropriate for their cultural context. In doing so consumer demand has taken on an integral function in allowing people to gain cultural ownership of a product manufactured elsewhere.
A testament to the effects of Indian Ocean textile trade, The Spinning World invites the reader to consider import products not as a necessary obstruction to local production but as an inspiration and trigger to local production and innovation as well, calling it an ‘import-blending’ rather than a ‘substitution’. (Riello and Parthasarathi, 2009:9) The authors point out the importance of how consumer tastes and demands have shaped and influenced those import products significantly and are therefore very much part of the design process. Jeremy Presthold’s book, Domesticating the World, inspires to perceive consumer demand in Africa as an agency that has significantly contributed to the global shaping of material culture. His ‘insights into how objects, symbols and people were remade through their movement and the movement of others’ (Presthold, 2008:4) demonstrates how cultural interchange can be understood as a symbiosis of mutual adaptations. If material objects have shaped the cultural encounter with their users, then in turn, the users must have also shaped the nature of the material objects over time, as ‘culture is always tied to its materiality and is inseparable from it.’ (Kalay and Kvan, 2008:15).
This agency of consumer demand has been indirectly cultivated by some of the print fabric manufacturers and African importers. In Togo for example, the Dutch textile manufacturer ‘Vlisco’ has worked over decades to cultivate direct input from local women who bring their products to market. Known as ‘Mama (or Nana) Benz’ these women enjoy a considerable influence on translating local tastes and creating demand for specific designs (Hemmings, Interview with Roger Gerards, 2015). In Mozambique, some of the elder women sell their cloths which they consider to be ‘traditional’ to importers of print fabrics from India so that these designs can be copied and reproduced (Field research, 2016, II-MR-1.2.16). In this way consumers have played an active role in preserving cloth designs that were considered culturally relevant and valuable.
Global mass consumption
How then is this currently changing in light of global fashion trends meeting local cloth traditions in rural African communities? And what is the role of emerging technologies in populating these trends locally? In rural farming communities of southern Mozambique…continue reading