FORMS OF (RE)PRESENTATION OF SELF AND IMAGINARIES OF CLOTHING: PRACTICES AND USES OF CLOTHING IN PRECARIOUS SITUATIONS.
This project proposes to explore the symbolic, affective and creative relationship woven around clothing by considering the combinatorial relationships between, on the one hand, the material constraints relating to the standard of living and, on the other, the symbolic scope of desires and tastes.
The meanings associated with clothing and their role in self-representation
The research project focuses on the forms of self-presentation and the clothing imaginaries of people in precarious situations. By reflecting on the social, moral and political scope of consumption, it explores the symbolic, affective and creative relationship woven around clothing with the aim of better understanding the combinatorial articulations between, on the one hand, material constraints relating to the standard of living and, on the other, the symbolic scope of desires and tastes. By focusing on the practices and uses of clothing in precarious situations, the project thus proposes an analysis of consumption practices from a perspective of moral economy and valorization. Indeed, the project seeks to understand the forms and processes of self-(re)valorization that can arise from clothing practices and the imaginary they carry. It also seeks to unpick the value regimes, the universes of meaning as well as the cultural codes associated with clothing, in the country of origin and in the French context of settlement. Ultimately, the research project intends to make intelligible the social and moral arrangements that operate around clothing and the significant springs of clothing practice in situations of precariousness.
An immersive experience to understand self-representations
Taking care not to overestimate creative capacities or overinterpret the symbolic dimension, this project aims to complicate the reading of consumption practices by going beyond the binary vision opposing necessity to freedom, the suffered to the wanted, the need to taste. To do this, it is necessary to be interested not only in doing, but especially in saying, that is to say in the repertoires and value regimes in which individuals inscribe their practices and choices. Thus, the methodological device used is based on ethnographic research. It is a method of collecting qualitative data based on participant observation, informal interviews and discussions within Vesti’boutiques. With this same objective, workshops (embroidery and/or film) were set up and led in small groups in order to explore the issues relating to the (re)presentation of oneself, tastes and needs, in a more creative framework. These workshop moments are an opportunity to collectively discuss the research and its challenges in order to advance it, differently, collectively. At the same time, more formal interviews are conducted with a few stakeholders (workers and users) that the ethnographic survey has identified. These interviews are used to return, in a more intimate setting, to the socio-professional and/or migratory journey and the evocation of desires and (dis)tastes.
Biography
A PhD student in anthropology (IRIS-EHESS, IFPO, CNRS) and part-time lecturer at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts, Emmanuelle Durand is currently making a short documentary film, “Bala seccar”, about the daily lives of two migrants selling second-hand clothes in Beirut. Her research focuses on the economy of second-hand clothing, industrial textile production, migration policies in Lebanon and France, and Syrian exile.