Reviews for Silly North Carolina Basketball Sports Mysteries

The average rating for Silly North Carolina Basketball Sports Mysteries based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-12-28 00:00:00 Ben Stokes Tales of cultural diaspora, explorations of the post-colonial cultures of globalisation are often told – music, film, sport and popular and high art are common foci of these analyses that are all too often masculinist in outlook and textual in analytical emphasis. One exception to these foci in recent years has been an emerging emphasis on clothing, fashion and the sartorial although many of these studies, especially in sociology and cultural studies, have remained textual dealing with textile design or sartorial style for instance (fashion studies has paid more attention to issues of business and design infrastructure, for instance in Breward and Gilbert’s Fashion’s World Cities ). Many of these texts retain a focus male actors in the field. This context makes this superb exploration of women as actors in the South Asian fashion diaspora all the more welcome. Bhachu, a South Asian scholar of multiple migration (from East Africa as a child to England and then as a scholar to the USA where she is a professor of sociology), has written widely on issues of women’s migration and entrepreneurship, the two issues she brings together in this study of women in the British-Asian clothing and fashion industries, with a specific focus on the ‘women’s suit’ – the salwaar-kameez that emerged in the mid- to late-1990s from its status as marker of migrant to become a high fashion item and increasingly ‘mainstreamed’. Bhachu identifies four groups and modes of women’s involvement in this economy – as consumers, designers, marketers and ‘home’ sewers. The consumer narrative is, in much of its form, unsurprising to those of us who observe clothing styles – the salwaar-kameez is widely worn in everyday circumstances (seen on most English streets most days, and some in plentitude) and special events – weddings, temple and elsewhere – but Bhachu links its increasing acceptability among younger women to two things, one a growing cultural confidence linked in some to a resistance to the banality of British racism and the other especially to the emergence of bhangra as a form of hybrid dance music where for many the salwaar-kameez allowed them to dance expressively and maintain levels of modesty but more importantly she points to a bleeding of the acceptability of one cultural form into another. When it comes to the entrepreneurs, she tells a similarly complex story of younger, less traditional designers who work with clients to co-design the suits; these are designers who work with the increasingly contracted distance of late capitalism, fast transportation and communication technologies, to have suits made in South Asia (mainly India) with turn around between design in London and delivery of a little as three weeks. Alongside these designers there are the traditionalists and revivalists whose work is often seen as akin to artistic production reviving old crafts and forms and for whom co-design and tailoring to individually preferred design (fusion and hybrid) traits is not part of their repertoire. The relations between these groups of designers is one of the most interesting aspects of the study, where many consumers see the revivalists’ discourse of ‘teaching’ the diaspora insulting and patronizing; more intriguing is that the two cases Bhachu explores (designers whose work is breathtaking in its beauty) are commercially unsuccessful in London, unable to strike a balance between wealthy non-Asian customers and the large Asian market. There is a really interesting distinction drawn in the discussion of these two groups between diasporic women (exemplified by the younger co-designing group) and transnational women (represented by the art-designers); this distinction is not often made in post-colonial studies and Bhachu notes the distinction as poorly theorized, but it seems crucial. Part of the reason for this entrepreneurial failure (alongside expense) might lie in the other two forms of entrepreneurship explored. The first is those women who market suits in a fairly conventional import-sales relationship. These are not designers but importers; whereas the co-designer group tends to be multiple migrants having learned their sewing and design skills especially in the East African diaspora, these importers tend to be direct migrants from South Asia where the sewing culture is less well developed mainly due to the size of the local tailoring industry. These women seem to be significant players in popularizing the salwaar-kameez, for instance in bringing together importers, designers and workers from other cultural sectors to highlight and enhance the profile of the suit, although the adoption of South Asian design motifs by Anglo designers and its presence in London Fashion Week events over the years has also been a factor of note. Bhachu paints a picture here of a good working relationships between the newer designers and these importers/marketers in networks the extend across London (the focus of this study – explorations of these forms of entrepreneurship in the midlands, especially Leicester and Birmingham would be welcome). The third group is, however, more remote from these established entrepreneurs in part because they are less commercial in outlook. Bhachu depicts this group of fashion workers, home based and often supplying networks of friends and local residents, as exponents of sina-prona (literally, sewing and beading, but idiom for the arts of homecraft). As with the newer designers, these women tend to be multiple migrants having learned their skills in the East African diaspora. Of her four cases, only one has formal training and experience of work in the high end clothing industry but all four are fine exponents of interpretation and adaptation of designs, often copying and adapting from pattern books, movies, advertising and other established designers. In most cases, also, these are working class women holding down other jobs (paid and unpaid) and underselling their skills while producing exemplary pieces. This is a rich and complex book depicting a gendered fashion industry co-producing a set of hybrid and post-colonising cultural forms not usually seen in analyses of fashion entrepreneurship that focus on men as agents employing women outworkers and factory workers in the migrant and diasporic fashion and textile industries. In these male-focused explorations we have a rehashed version of a story told for the last 130 or more years in Britain (much longer if we include Flemish and Huguenot weavers); Bhachu has opened up a more diverse fashion industry paying much greater attention to women as motive forces in its development. In focusing on the salwaar-kameez she has also been able to show how these women’s mundane knowledge allowed them to develop a space in the fashion/clothing industry that the more established male entrepreneurs had not identified. Ten years after its publication, it remains a beacon in the field partly because of its women-focused analysis highlighting the commercialization of mundane domestic skills, partly because of its distinctions between East African and direct South Asian migrants and partly because of its exploration of post-colonial fashion cultures that accentuates entrepreneurship over textual readings of textiles and style. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-03-11 00:00:00 Jesse Crofoot I would call this a coffee table book, in that it has a brief introductory text, then a whole bunch of sumptuous photos of gorgeous fans. 2 or 3 of the photos are poor quality, but the rest are sharp and clear. The photos show a nice selection across time and cultures. I'm surprised that so many have survived, considering how ephemeral fans are.