Archive | May, 2015

Global Fashion: A Window into Globalization

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Bangalore Fashion Week 2014

Bangalore Fashion Week 2014

For centuries, textiles and clothing styles have been one of the most obvious and poignant indicators of cross-cultural interchange.  With the rapid rise of globalization over the past several decades, the spread of fashion across global cultures has mirrored the changes in economy, culture, and daily life that globalization has brought. By studying the history and current trends in the fashion business, we not only address a fascinating and exciting field, but we can gain a better understanding of the complicated linkages that connect cultures and people in the modern world.

An example of the tendency for fashion to signify larger global changes is the 1990’s trend of “Orientalism” in Western fashion. Throughout the late 1980’s and 1990’s, fashion borrowed stylistic influences from Asian traditions. Some scholars believe that this trend was a result of the “opening up” of China in the early 1980’s as well as Hong Kong’s separation from Great Britain in 1997. These events not only allowed for the easier diffusion of Chinese cultural traditions throughout the world, but also contributed to an “accelerated a sense of Chinese identity,” as well as a confidence in that identity (Paulicelli and Clark, 2008).

As countries and cultures seek to define their cultural identity within the globalized context of the information age, fashion weeks are being born around the globe. Kazakhstan started their first ever fashion week in 2014, which received much attention from the fashion and lifestyle blogging world (Koopmans, 2014). Iran and Azerbaijan will celebrate their first ever fashion weeks this year. The Mercedes Benz STYLO Asia Fashion Week hosts shows rotated between in countries of China, Korea, Japan, India, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Vietnam.  These fashion weeks do not only serve to celebrate local fashion designers, they also attract international buyers and journalists that push forward the globalization of the fashion industry.

Despite being touted as a Western tradition, fashion weeks have played a role in reclaiming cultural identity through personal style. For example, this year India celebrates its 25th fashion show season that has spanned over the past 15 years. The unique and often non-western fashions of India are in many ways an anti-colonial statement, and these fashion weeks serve as a way to control their own narrative and representations in regards to fashion (Arora, 2014). Cultural appropriation has become a hot topic issue in the fashion industry, as models and celebrities have come under fire for donning bindis and Native American headdresses. Fashion communicates identity and power, and conflict around the political implications of fashion is nothing new. Marie Antoinette is one of the most well-known historical fashion plates, and scholars continue to study how her fashion influenced (and angered) citizens, reflected political alliances, and became internationally popular during Louis the XVI’s reign (Oatman-Stanford, 2015). Exploring the fashion trends of past and current cultures gives unique insight into globalization and the understandings held about globalization at the time.

Starting on May 15, 2015 the Rare Books and Manuscript Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will host a summer exhibition on fashion plates entitled Poplin & Paper: Four Centuries of Fashion in Print. This exhibition, curated by Anna Chen, will explore the intersection of print and fashion.

Find more information about this topic with the resources below.

Web Resources

Encyclopedia of Fashion – Globalization

What It’s Like At Fashion Week in Kazakhstan

Iran holds first ever fashion week – AlMonitor

First Azerbaijan Fashion Week scheduled for May 2015

Mercedes Benz STYLO Asia Fashion Week

India: Lakmé Fashion Week

Fashion to Die For: Did an Addiction to Fads Lead Marie Antoinette to the Guillotine?

 

Scholarly Articles (Available through UIUC Online Journals and Databases): 

Arora, S. (2014). Globalized Frames of Indian Fashion. Global Studies Journal, 6(1), 37-43.

Moeran, B. (2008). Economic and cultural production as structural paradox: the case of international fashion magazine publishing. International Review Of Sociology, 18(2), 267-281

 

Books (Available through UIUC Libraries)

Eicher, J. 2008. The Visible Self: Global Perspectives of Dress, Culture, and Society (3rd eds.). New York: Fairchild Books

McCracken, A. (2014). The beauty trade: Youth, gender, and fashion globlization. New York, New York: Oxford University Press.

Paulicelli, Eugenia, and Clark, Hazel, eds.(2008). Fabric of Cultures : Fashion, Identity, Globalization. Florence, KY, USA: Routledge

Maynard, Margaret. (2004) Dress and globalisation.  Manchester: Manchester University Press

 

 

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Europe Spurred to Action on Mediterranean Migration

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Tunisian coast sign

A sign on the Tunisian coast. Credit Flickr user noborder network.

On Sunday, April 19th, a boat carrying as many as 950 people capsized in the Libyan waters south of Italy, focusing international attention on the problem of illegal immigration and human trafficking in the Mediterranean. An estimated 800 people drowned in this latest incident, where eyewitnesses stated that hundreds had been locked under the deck of the ship, with no chance of escape. But this shocking tragedy, while it may be the worst to date,  is only a fraction of the much larger death toll that has resulted from attempted migration across the Mediterranean, which has reached 1,727 so far in 2015.

The individuals risking their lives to reach Europe through the Mediterranean do so for many, valid, reasons. They flee their home countries to escape war, poverty, or political persecution that has erupted in many African and Middle-Eastern states since the Arab uprisings of 2011. This type of migration is known as “irregular migration,” which involves foreign nationals living in countries in which they do not have a legal status, or foreign nationals working illegally in a country in which they do have a legal status. But, sadly, due to the horrendous and dangerous conditions on many of the boats that carry these migrants, many of them never reach their destination. Migrants often pay large sums of money to owners of vessels to carry them across the sea. However, the vessels are often not equipped to carry the amount of people that are placed on board. This leads to dangerous conditions and wreckage, whereby thousands of migrants have lost their lives in the past several years.

In a special meeting of the European Council on April 23rd, the Council discussed this growing problem and action that could be taken to save lives in the Mediterranean. The President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, urged the Council to take action.

“Saving the lives of innocent people is the number one priority. But saving lives is not just about rescuing people at sea. It is also about stopping the smugglers and addressing irregular migration,” the President urged.

At this special meeting the Council released a statement that included several key promises. The first is to strengthen the EU presence at sea, by tripling the financial support for search and rescue operations. The second objective is to pursue the traffickers themselves, through existing international legal channels.  Thirdly, the Council vowed to prevent illegal migration by working with the countries from which the migrants flee in attempts to solve some of the problems that lead to the illegal migration. And lastly, the Council agreed to strengthen cooperation within European Union member states to comply with the Common European Asylum System, which is based on the 1951 Geneva Convention on the protection of refugees, and attempts to maintain a common European policy on protecting those asylum seekers who are fleeing violence in their home countries.

The European Council’s action on this issue is hugely important to finding an end to the tragic loss of life that is happening in the Mediterranean. But the UN is also recognizing that the problem is a global issue of human rights, and is taking action of several fronts as well. The UN Refugee Agency has been assisting those who are rescued at sea or attempting to make the journey to pursue asylum status, but this often means taking the refugees to detention centers where conditions are very poor. In an April 19th press statement, UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres stressed that finding a solution to the problem will involve not only helping those who are seeking asylum, but attempting to “address the root causes” of the migration that’s happening in the Mediterranean.

Find more information about this issue with the resources below.

Web Resources

OECD Factbook 2014: Economic, Environmental and Social Statistics: Migration and employment DOI:10.1787/factbook-2014-8-en

European Union – Clandestino – Database on Irregular Migration

UN Refugee Agency

CBS News – Death in the Mediterranean

Scholarly Articles (Available through UIUC Online Journals and Databases)

Battaini-Dragoni, Gabriella. 2002. “The Distinctive Role of the Council of Europe in Migration Management: The Case of the Euro-Mediterranean Region.”European Journal Of Migration & Law 4, no. 4: 1-497. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed April 30, 2015).

Mountz, A., & Loyd, J. M. (2014). Constructing the Mediterranean Region: Obscuring Violence in the Bordering of Europe’s Migration “Crises”. ACME: An International E-Journal For Critical Geographies, 13(2), 173-195.

Raeymaekers, T. (2014). Introduction Europe’s Bleeding Border and the Mediterranean as a Relational Space. ACME: An International E-Journal For Critical Geographies, 13(2), 163-172.

Books (Available through UIUC Libraries)

Lazaridis, Gabriella (2010). Security, insecurity, and migration in Europe. Burlington, VT : Ashgate.

Tapia, Stéphane de. (2008). The Euro-Mediterranean migration system. Strasbourg : Council of Europe Pub.

Kneebone, Susan,, Stevens, Dallal,Baldassar, Loretta. (Eds.) (2014). Refugee protection and the role of law :conflicting identities. New York, NY : Routledge, 2014.

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