mullen
Timothy Burke. Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women:
Commodification, Consumption and Cleanliness in Modern
Zimbabwe. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996.
Timothy Burke, in Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women, "takes up the challenge" of understanding the interrelationship between colonialism, consumer capitalism, and the consciousness of "needs" in
Zimbabwe. (2) He tries to assess different theories of the "social construction" of desire, focusing specifically on the purchase and consumption of consumer goods made for use on the body. It is both a history of the construction of consumer "needs" in Zimbabwe in the last two centuries and an attempt to understand the ways that "political economy, cultural studies, and critical theory" may be brought "into productive dialogue with each other." (5)
He contends that to understand postwar commodity culture and "African" identities in
Zimbabwe, it is necessary to study the prior social and cultural history of "hygiene," the development of merchant capital and manufacturing in the colonial period, and the use of advertising in the post-World War II and post-colonial periods. Although perceived as part of
"common sense," contemporary "African" values of bodily cleanliness, he argues, are the result of these historical processes. (9) Drawing on neo-Marxian notions of commodity fetishism and commodification, he believes that consumer capitalism exploited, to a certain extent, previous traditions of both colonial cultural hegemony and native resistance. Yet he maintains that a domination model of cultural diffusion is insufficient, because it fails to adequately account for the construction of stable "needs" and multiple "native" forms of contestation and appropriation.
He therefore utilizes Foucault’s notion of power as "both restricting and productive," but he retains Marxian analysis of the negative "political" implications of "colonial rule and capitalist domination." (7)
The book is organized thematically into three
Commodification, Consumption and Cleanliness in Modern
Zimbabwe. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996.
Timothy Burke, in Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women, "takes up the challenge" of understanding the interrelationship between colonialism, consumer capitalism, and the consciousness of "needs" in
Zimbabwe. (2) He tries to assess different theories of the "social construction" of desire, focusing specifically on the purchase and consumption of consumer goods made for use on the body. It is both a history of the construction of consumer "needs" in Zimbabwe in the last two centuries and an attempt to understand the ways that "political economy, cultural studies, and critical theory" may be brought "into productive dialogue with each other." (5)
He contends that to understand postwar commodity culture and "African" identities in
Zimbabwe, it is necessary to study the prior social and cultural history of "hygiene," the development of merchant capital and manufacturing in the colonial period, and the use of advertising in the post-World War II and post-colonial periods. Although perceived as part of
"common sense," contemporary "African" values of bodily cleanliness, he argues, are the result of these historical processes. (9) Drawing on neo-Marxian notions of commodity fetishism and commodification, he believes that consumer capitalism exploited, to a certain extent, previous traditions of both colonial cultural hegemony and native resistance. Yet he maintains that a domination model of cultural diffusion is insufficient, because it fails to adequately account for the construction of stable "needs" and multiple "native" forms of contestation and appropriation.
He therefore utilizes Foucault’s notion of power as "both restricting and productive," but he retains Marxian analysis of the negative "political" implications of "colonial rule and capitalist domination." (7)
The book is organized thematically into three