Clothing, Kinship, and Representation: Transnational Wardrobes in Michigan's African Diaspora Communities.

Abstract

This dissertation is about how shared engagements with clothing in different ways forge meaningful relationships within and between Africans living in the diasporic setting of Michigan. Members of African communities in Michigan negotiate dialogues and experiences of family through sharing similar aesthetics -- despite diverse historical, social, political, and economic life histories. The understanding of the processes by which bazin riche - a prominent textile worn to important family and social events - comes to life on the body is shared by many members of African Diaspora communities, even some who cannot afford it, in Michigan through embodied experiences of participating in family and social events. The initial ethnographic research for this project was carried out through interviews and participant observation with cloth vendors, tailors, and female consumers of bazin riche in Dakar, Senegal while the bulk of the research was conducted through interviews and extensive participant observation with members of African Diaspora communities – originally from various countries in West Africa - who reside currently in the Detroit Metropolitan area of Michigan. This research also included active membership in one of the major African Diaspora Organizations in Detroit. Inquiry into the use and wear of how people define, engage with, and embody bazin riche in Dakar, and in the African diasporic setting of Michigan highlights important ways in which members of the African Diaspora in Michigan negotiate representation and family. Evidence analyzed from this research suggests that formalized representations of family unity are embodied through dress at public events and during meetings planning those events, and that while shared visions of one big African family in the diaspora are difficult to maintain, disunities between individuals and groups become overridden with eventual collaboration because of shared desires to maintain proper representations of the African family to the groups at large.