عنوان

Capping Power? Clothing and the Female Body in African Methodist Episcopal Mission Photographs

LA121176

انگلیسی

Capping Power? Clothing and the Female Body in African Methodist Episcopal Mission Photographs

[Article]

Claire Cooke

Leiden

Brill

In this article, I argue that the introduction of a uniform for female converts was a crucial factor in maintaining power dynamics in African Methodist Episcopal missionary work conducted in South Africa between 1900 and 1940. This relationship, I suggest, is epitomized in photographs from the mission field. Through studying the ways missionaries photographed women, I am able to critique how clothing expressed inherent, imbalanced power relations between missionaries and converts. I thus build on existing literature concerning the relationship between clothing and the indigenous female body, through an examination of clothing as a marker of status within the patriarchal mission family construct. In this article, I argue that the introduction of a uniform for female converts was a crucial factor in maintaining power dynamics in African Methodist Episcopal missionary work conducted in South Africa between 1900 and 1940. This relationship, I suggest, is epitomized in photographs from the mission field. Through studying the ways missionaries photographed women, I am able to critique how clothing expressed inherent, imbalanced power relations between missionaries and converts. I thus build on existing literature concerning the relationship between clothing and the indigenous female body, through an examination of clothing as a marker of status within the patriarchal mission family construct.

2014

418-442

Mission Studies

31/3

1573-3831

African American

clothing

General

History of Religion

missionary women

photography

power

Religion & Society

Religious Studies

Social Sciences

South Africa

Theology and World Christianity

Claire Cooke

10.1163/15733831-12341359

p

[Article]

275578

a

Y