Book Launch for Dress Cultures in Zambia. Interwoven Histories, Global Exchanges, and Everyday Life

CAS is honoured to host a launch of Karen Tranberg Hansen’s recent book on Dress Cultures in Zambia. Interwoven Histories, Global Exchanges, and Everyday Life. This draws on half-a-century of research in Zambia and regional scholarship. The book offers a vibrant history of changing dress practices from the late-colonial period to the present day. Exploring how the dressed body serves as the point of contact between personal, local, and global experiences, she argues that dress is just as central to political power as it is to personal style.

Karen Tranberg Hansen is a professor emerita from Northwestern University where she focused her research on youth, domesticity, and consumption. She has published widely on dress culture in Africa as well as the body politic. She has earned many awards, among them the Anthony Leeds Prize in Urban Anthropology, the Society of Economic Anthropology Book Award, and a book prize from the Society for the Anthropology of Work.