Global Exposure: Secondhand Clothing from the West and the Urban‐Rural Interface in Zambia

Abstract

Consumption Offers A compelling angle for reconsidering the urban in ongoing transformations both of livelihoods in Zambia's capital Lusaka and of urban‐rural relations. The paper draws on research into the commercial export of secondhand clothing from North America and Northwestern Europe with particular attention to the consumption practices this trade has fuelled in Zambia since the late 1980s. The popular consumption circuit that has emerged around the secondhand clothing trade is replacing conventional rural‐urban distinctions with notions of us/them, and rich/poor countries as Zambians construe meanings about themselves and the West through clothing consumption.