Domesticating the Global

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, vernacular commercial signage—often hand painted by local sign writers—has evolved in conversation with sweeping economic privatization and liberalization initiatives enacted since the 1990s. Many of Lusaka's sign writers employ tactics that visually link their work to globally dominant design practices as they simultaneously imbue global brand imagery with Zambian specificity. Hinging upon visual and historical analysis of locally made commercial signs, in conversation with the macro- and micro-processes of globalization, this article examines these tactics of improvisation and appropriation to investigate how they both reflect and shape contemporary Zambian narratives of locality and cosmopolitanism. By harnessing powerful brand imagery for individual and community interests as well as public and private institutions, Lusaka's sign writers have repositioned seemingly marginal vernacular practices at the center of everyday cultural production in the globalized economy.