By providing a detailed history of this company and the intersecting histories of colonialism and printing techniques, Sylvanus shows how the company's recent brand publicity as both authentic African heritage and the latest new fashion reflects the company's attempts to manage the fast-paced competition for consumers of West African cloth, who have a range of manufactured wax and fancy print ... Read morecloth from which to choose....The author also presents an excellent discussion of intellectual property rights, with the company, Vlisco, claiming legal and technical rights to its wax print textiles while Togolese women claim their own measures of value and ownership.
Choice Presents an ethnography of West African wax cloth, exploring the history, manufacture, and marketing of wax cloth and using data collected between 2000 and 2010 to illustrate political, economic, and gender relations in global capitalism.
Journal of Economic Literature Sylvanus's excellent multi-layered trans-historical study of Togolese wax-print fabric (or pagne) interweaves the role of African women in postcolonial developments, on the one hand, with a timely intervention in the 'China-in-Africa' debates on the other. . . . Provides essential reading not only for those interested in wax cloth, but also for those interested in its long-standing role in patterning relations between women, market and nation.
Africa Show Less