Supporting data for "Co-Constructing South-South Fashion"

The supporting data consists of handwritten fieldnotes and photos created during seven months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in China (in 2019) and Mozambique (in 2019 and 2021). 

My thesis is based on participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and visual analysis. It examines the ways that Chinese-made garments and textiles are presented and promoted as being fashionable in everyday business interactions in Mozambique. Thereby, it explores how fashion is mediated in South–South contexts that are largely detached from Euro–American fashion systems.
Oscillating between the formal and the informal economies, South–South fashion chains stretch from the production sites in mainland China, to consumers across the African continent. At the Mozambican side of these chains, several different groups make use of their own specific strengths and advantages – be it access to capital and networks, long-term trading experience, business expertise, or an intimate knowledge of local tastes and trends – to sell Chinese-made clothes, shoes, accessories, and fabrics. These groups include established Indian traders, West African individual traders, Chinese entrepreneurs, Chinese garment and textile companies, and since recently, Mozambicans, including women, who see the availability and affordability of Chinese-made products as an opportunity to start their own businesses. These diverse actors partly complement and partly contradict each other in mediating the fashionability of Chinese-made products, while jointly constructing them as fashion. Through this unintentional co-creation, the groups selling Chinese-made garments and textiles in Mozambique exert their personal agency to carve out market niches for themselves. In doing so, they reconfigure, subvert, and instrumentalise Western-shaped notions of authenticity, and also diversify the way that fashion mediation is understood, adding a South–South perspective to it.
Furthermore, my thesis probes into the more neglected, mundane, grassroots ramifications of Chinese ambitions abroad, namely in the form of cheap, everyday garment and textile goods. It shows the potential of Chinese-made goods to stimulate local fashion cultures and illustrates the manner in which the COVID-19 pandemic has further strengthened the domination of the Mozambican market by Chinese products. 

In Mozambique and China, I collected data through informal conversations with Chinese wholesalers, retailers, trade agents, and sales representatives, as well as with traders, wholesalers, shop owners, salespeople, and consumers of Mozambican and other nationalities. As a participant observer, I immersed myself in the daily lives and social settings of these informants, and observed their everyday work procedures, working conditions, and social interactions with others over more than seven months in total. To build rapport, I made sure to visit each participant regularly (some of them up to weekly) and to familiarise myself with their schedules, workloads, and habits, so my presence would not unduly interfere with their duties. Whenever possible, I also joined the leisure activities of my informants, such as lunch breaks, beach outings, day trips, church visits, and social gatherings in homes, restaurants, cafes, bars, and casinos, or at special events organised by the Chinese Association in Maputo, the Maputo Chinese Covenant Church, or the Africa–Guangdong Business Association in Guangzhou. 
This approach allowed me to experience and trace the lives of the people involved in the Chinese–Mozambican garment and textile trade both on- and off-duty, thereby acquiring a more realistic and pragmatic picture of their everyday work and practices. It also enabled me to map my informants’ interactions, negotiations, and relationships with their various colleagues, clients, and competitors. Setting ethnographic accounts of their strategies, attitudes, ideas, aspirations, and struggles, in relation to their age, gender, nationality, socioeconomic status, education, and work experience, helped me to contextualise my analysis. It also provided a better understanding of the impact of various demographic and sociological factors on the extent to which different groups of people can exercise their personal agency in the shaping and creation of fashion. To grasp the workings of Chinese–Mozambican fashion exchanges, I collected and analysed a range of oral, written, statistical, and visual data in the course of my participant observation, including observations and notes of informants’ words, interactions, body language, and attitudes. 

During my field research, I also conducted about 50 interviews that varied considerably in their length and depth, and their level of formality and structuredness. My interviewees consisted of garment and textile traders, wholesalers, shop owners, salespeople, and consumers of all genders, ages, and social backgrounds. While most consumers were Mozambicans, other participants were of different nationalities, including Chinese, Mozambican, Senegalese, Malian, Guinean, Ivorian, Ethiopian, Indian, and Portuguese. Therefore, the main criteria for inclusion were location, current or former profession, and engagement with Chinese-made garments and textiles. All of the interviewees were active in that area or had only recently left it. In order to obtain a well-rounded perspective on how these items are turned into fashion in Chinese–Mozambican trade, the selected sample represented a balanced mix of seniorities and job functions. I got in contact with potential interviewees in shops, malls, markets, on the street, and at events in various urban locations in Mozambique and Guangzhou. I also built on the connections I had established during my first stay in Mozambique in 2017, used the snowball method, and got in contact with people via social media. Moreover, I benefitted from the professional and personal connections of researchers at the Instituto de Estudos Sociais e Económicos and the Centre for African Studies at the Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo.
For most interviews, I selected a semi-structured format with open-ended questions to facilitate free-flowing, improvisational discussion, and encourage answers of greater depth and candour. For this purpose, I usually prepared a list of topics beforehand that I would like to talk about with a particular participant, and then allowed the interview to flow organically, using the topic list as a guide whenever the discussion stalled. I interviewed most of my informants several times over the span of months or even years. These always slightly different repeat conversations allowed me to stay up-to-date with ongoing developments and to discuss any emerging issues. I sometimes made appointments for formal interviews as well, especially if I knew that an informant’s time was limited, and this would be the only opportunity for me to speak with them.
The interview topics and questions were designed and grouped around the main research objectives and questions, but were also tailored to the job profiles and descriptions of interviewees belonging to different subsectors. Therefore, the questions focused on four main aspects: the participants’ daily work processes, their perception of authenticity, the promotion and characterisation of certain items as being fashionable (which includes their perceived role in this process), and external factors of political, cultural, social, or economic nature that influence their work.
I conducted all interviews in Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese, or English, at the interviewees’ workplaces or homes, or in public spaces, such as restaurants, kiosks, and bars, at their convenience. The duration of the interviews also depended on the participants and their availability, but typically lasted between 30 and 90 minutes. I usually relied exclusively on hand-written interview notes in order to maintain an informal and natural atmosphere.

本研究所依托的数据集包含在2019年中国及莫桑比克（2019年及2021年）进行的七个月人类学田野调查期间所创作的手写田野笔记和照片。本研究基于参与式观察、半结构化访谈和视觉分析，探讨中国制造的服装和纺织品如何在莫桑比克日常商业互动中被展示和推广为时尚。从而，它探讨了时尚在南南语境中的中介作用，这些语境在很大程度上与欧美的时尚体系相脱节。南南时尚链条在形式和非形式经济之间波动，从中国大陆的生产基地延伸至非洲大陆的消费者。在这些链条的莫桑比克一侧，多个不同的群体利用他们各自的特定优势和优势——无论是资本和网络接入、长期贸易经验、商业专长，还是对当地口味和趋势的深入了解——来销售中国制造的服装、鞋类、配饰和布料。这些群体包括固定的印度商人、西非个体商人、中国企业家、中国服装和纺织品公司，以及最近出现的莫桑比克人，包括妇女，他们把中国制造产品的可用性和性价比视为开始自己业务的机遇。这些不同的行为者在部分上互补和部分上相互矛盾地中介了中国制造产品的时尚性，同时共同构建了它们作为时尚的形象。通过这种无意识的共创，销售中国制造服装和纺织品于莫桑比克的群体发挥他们的个人能动性，为自己开拓市场细分领域。在这个过程中，他们重构、颠覆和利用了西方形态的 authenticity 理念，同时也丰富了时尚中介的理解方式，为其中增添了南南视角。此外，我的论文还探讨了关于中国海外雄心更被忽视、更为日常、草根层面的后果，即以廉价、日常的服装和纺织品商品的形式。它展示了中国制造商品刺激当地时尚文化的潜力，并说明了COVID-19大流行如何进一步巩固了中国产品在莫桑比克市场的统治地位。在莫桑比克和中国，我通过与中国批发商、零售商、贸易代理和销售代表，以及与商人、批发商、店主、销售人员和其他国籍的贸易商、批发商、店主、销售人员和消费者进行非正式对话收集数据。作为一名参与式观察者，我沉浸在这些信息提供者的日常生活和社会环境中，在总共七个月的时间内观察了他们的日常工作流程、工作条件和与其他人的社会互动。为了建立联系，我确保定期（有些甚至每周）拜访每个参与者，并熟悉他们的日程、工作量和习惯，以确保我的存在不会过度干扰他们的职责。在可能的情况下，我还加入了信息提供者的休闲活动，如午餐休息、海滩之旅、一日游、教堂访问以及在家、餐厅、咖啡馆、酒吧和赌场或由马普托的中国协会、马普托中国公会教堂或广州的非洲-广东商会组织的特殊活动。这种方法使我能够体验和追踪参与中国-莫桑比克服装和纺织品贸易的人在岗和离岗的生活，从而获得他们日常工作和实践的更为现实和实用的图景。它还使我能够绘制出我的信息提供者与他们的各种同事、客户和竞争对手之间的互动、谈判和关系图。通过将他们的策略、态度、思想、抱负和斗争与他们的年龄、性别、国籍、社会经济地位、教育和工作经验联系起来，设置人类学叙述，有助于我分析其背景。它还提供了对各种人口和社会学因素如何影响不同群体在塑造和创造时尚的过程中行使个人能动性的影响范围的理解。为了把握中国-莫桑比克时尚交流的运作方式，我在参与观察的过程中收集和分析了一系列口头、书面、统计和视觉数据，包括信息提供者的言语、互动、肢体语言和态度的观察和笔记。在实地研究中，我还进行了大约50次访谈，这些访谈在长度、深度、正式程度和结构化程度方面差异很大。我的访谈对象包括服装和纺织品贸易商、批发商、店主、销售人员和所有性别、年龄和社会背景的消费者。虽然大多数消费者是莫桑比克人，但其他参与者来自不同的国籍，包括中国、莫桑比克、塞内加尔、马里、几内亚、科特迪瓦、埃塞俄比亚、印度和葡萄牙。因此，纳入的主要标准是地点、当前或以前的职业以及与中国制造的服装和纺织品相关的参与。所有受访者都在该领域活跃或刚刚离开。为了全面了解这些商品在中国-莫桑比克贸易中如何转变为时尚，选定的样本代表了资深和职务功能的平衡混合。我在莫桑比克和广州的各个城市地点的商店、购物中心、市场、街道和活动中与潜在的受访者取得联系。我还利用了我在2017年首次访问莫桑比克时建立的联系，使用了滚雪球法，并通过社交媒体与人取得联系。此外，我还得益于莫桑比克马普托伊达蒙达内大学社会和经济研究学院和非洲研究中心的研究人员的专业和个人联系。对于大多数访谈，我选择了半结构化格式，使用开放式问题来促进自由流畅的即兴讨论，并鼓励更深入、更坦诚的回答。为此，我通常事先准备了一份我希望与特定参与者讨论的话题列表，然后在讨论停滞时使用该列表作为指南。我在几个月甚至几年内多次采访了我的信息提供者。这些略有不同的重复对话使我能够了解持续的发展，并讨论任何新出现的问题。我有时还安排了正式的访谈，特别是如果我知道信息提供者的时间有限，这将是我与他们交谈的唯一机会。访谈主题和问题被设计和分组，围绕主要的研究目标和问题，但也针对属于不同子部门的访谈对象的职业概况和描述进行了定制。因此，问题集中在四个主要方面：参与者的日常工作流程、他们对authenticity的认识、某些商品被推广和描绘为时尚的方式（包括他们在此过程中的感知角色），以及影响他们工作的政治、文化、社会或经济外部因素。我在访谈对象的工作场所或家中，或在公共场所，如餐厅、小摊、酒吧，以他们的方便为条件，用普通话、葡萄牙语或英语进行所有访谈。访谈的持续时间也取决于参与者及其可用性，但通常持续30至90分钟。我通常完全依赖手写访谈笔记，以保持非正式和自然的氛围。