New Publication: Kloß – Fabrics of Indianness. The Exchange and Consumption of Clothing in Transnational Guyanese Hindu Communities

http://www.palgrave.com/de/book/9781137565402

 

“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)