000001390 001__ 1390 000001390 005__ 20240523045444.0 000001390 0247_ $$2doi$$a10.6082/uchicago.1390 000001390 041__ $$aen 000001390 245__ $$aTailoring Benin: Material Culture and Artisan Production in Urban West Africa 000001390 260__ $$bThe University of Chicago 000001390 269__ $$a2018-12 000001390 300__ $$a322 000001390 336__ $$aDissertation 000001390 502__ $$bPh.D. 000001390 520__ $$aThis dissertation traces the history of the objects, craft knowledge, and practices of artisan tailoring on the Abomey Plateau in central Benin (former Dahomey) from the pre-colonial era to the present. It begins with a survey of cloth and clothing production and consumption in the slave-trading Kingdom of Dahomey (c.1600-1894) when most men and women wore wrapped or draped cloth and few sported tailored outfits. Wrapping remained the primary mode of dress long into the era of French rule (1894-1960), despite colonial programs to regulate clothing production through controls on artisan labor and the growing popularity of styles such as dresses, skirts, trousers, and suits. My project then traces the rise of tailoring and the increased demand for fitted clothing in the post-WWII era to the present. Tailoring fostered new possibilities for men and women and their respective gender roles, while the process of clothes-making in central markets and neighborhood workshops helped to materialize urban spaces and ideas about city life. At the same time, the advent of tailoring apprenticeships served as an alternative to formal education and opened new professional pathways to both men and women. By revealing this long history of shifting sartorial practices of production and consumption, I show how ordinary Beninois men and women experienced and gave meaning to modernity, urbanization, and political transformation. I argue that tailors and artisan-made tailored clothing helped Beninois make sense of political and social changes. As new independent states emerged in the wake of colonialism and as the region urbanized in the mid-twentieth century, tailored fitted clothing served as a site where ordinary people worked out what it meant to be part of a new nation and a new city. By producing clothing for clients, tailors played a key role in leading conversations with their fellow citizens about how men and women should look and act in an independent and modern Benin. Indeed, I argue that by designing, cutting, and sewing fitted clothes, tailors materialized and gave expression to new possibilities of self, city, and nation during this tumultuous period in West African History. 000001390 542__ $$fUniversity of Chicago dissertations are covered by copyright. 000001390 650__ $$aAfrican history 000001390 650__ $$aAfrican studies 000001390 653__ $$aartisan 000001390 653__ $$aBenin 000001390 653__ $$aclothing 000001390 653__ $$agender 000001390 653__ $$atailors 000001390 653__ $$aurban 000001390 690__ $$aSocial Sciences Division 000001390 691__ $$aHistory 000001390 7001_ $$aFretwell, Elizabeth Ann$$uUniversity of Chicago 000001390 72012 $$aEmily Lynn Oscborn 000001390 72014 $$aRachel Jean-Baptiste 000001390 72014 $$aLeora Auslander 000001390 8564_ $$950347865-0fcd-4c3d-b562-f1bbbb79dc44$$s10297770$$uhttps://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/1390/files/Fretwell_uchicago_0330D_14587.pdf$$eEmbargo (2020-12-19) 000001390 909CO $$ooai:uchicago.tind.io:1390$$pDissertations$$pGLOBAL_SET 000001390 983__ $$aDissertation