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If the cap fits: Kanga names and women`s voice in Swahili society

As with other women`s garments, the kanga has always been closely linked with the perceptions and attitudes that the society has about women themselves. These perceptions and attitudes continue to shape and determine the place of women in their socio-cultural context. Just as women`s clothes are often taken to define, if partially, the beings that occupy them, similarly, in characteristically wearing certain garments and not others, women then assign to those garments what is perceived to be their `feminineness`. In Tanzania, the kanga indexes this `femininity` in a strong way, in spite of the fact that men also wear it.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa:de:qucosa:10606
Date15 October 2012
CreatorsYahya-Othman, Saida
ContributorsUniversity of Dar es Salaam, Universität zu Köln
Source SetsHochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typedoc-type:article, info:eu-repo/semantics/article, doc-type:Text
SourceSwahili Forum; 4 (1997), S. 135-149
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Relationurn:nbn:de:bsz:15-qucosa-97269, qucosa:11675

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