What To Wear, What To Wear?: Western Women and Imperialism in Gilgit, Pakistan

Abstract

In this paper I inaugurate a feminist sociology of imperialism that extends the work of postcolonial scholars interested in explaining how Western women are located in global projects of imperialism. As part of an ethnographic study of the lives of contemporary development workers in Gilgit, northern Pakistan, this analysis describes and theorizes the significance of clothing choices to the formation of Western women's subjectivities and to transcultural power relations in this postcolonial setting. I demonstrate that decisions Western women make about what to wear in Gilgit develop into arenas of socio-cultural inclusion and exclusion through processes of identification and differentiation, as clothing styles are used to naturalize power hierarchies between Western and local Muslim women.In this country, Western women's identity is often focused on the dupatta. Wear it or not wear it. Resent it. Wear it with resentment. Hate it, and express that hate elsewhere. All that focus on a stupid piece of cloth. It must be a lot of other things, actually, being verbalized in that one thing (Jane, 2000). This paper addresses one of the main questions posed by postcolonial feminist theorists across disciplinary boundaries: How are Western women 1 located in global projects of imperialism? Literary theorists, geographers, and historians who have tackled this complex problem argue that the dominant narrative in the Correspondence should be directed to Nancy Cook, . 1 Throughout the paper I usually use the term "Western women" to describe Euro-American women as a social group. I realize that group designations (e.g., Northerners, metropolitans, subalterns) are problematic in that they can be ambiguous, homogenizing, exclusionary and over-inclusive. With these difficulties in mind, I employ the term in keeping with what is most commonly used within postcolonial literatures and by my research participants to describe themselves. Moreover, my analysis outlines the complex differences among individual women of this group, which helps unsettle the term's homogenizing tendencies. 3510162-0436/05/1200-0351/0 C 2005 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc.

The Paradoxes of Aid Work

“…However, the relationship is of course much more complex and countries such as India are by now aid donors as well as recipients, whereas countries in Eastern Europe were donors prior to the end of the Cold War and are now donor countries again. In contrast to studies on aidworkers that focus either on North/Western expatriates (Cook 2007;Heron 2007;Fechter and Hindman 2011;Mosse 2011) or on local volunteer and staff (Heaton Shrestha 2006;Ahmad 2007;Arvidson 2008), my sample includes both national and international staff. It also reflects the diversity of the aidworker population with respect to organizations and type of contract, which comprises few with permanent contracts with UN agencies or major international NGOs, many short-term consultants based in home countries and a 'social core' of longer-term contract workers who move from one organization to another (Apthorpe 2011b).…”

“…Moreover, and most importantly, region mattered. Women from the Global North benefited from (neo)colonial continuities and the 'whiteness of power' (Goudge 2003), and their daily practices and identities were shaped by multiple and contingent discourses of power (White 2006;Cook 2007;Heron 2007). Development projects, in particular those focusing on gender, represent career opportunities for feminists from the Global North (Syed and Ali 2011), who represent 'masculine patriarchs' (Dogra 2011) compared to women from the Global South who are the intended beneficiaries of empowerment projects.…”

“…The emphasis was on the behaviour of Western women to respect the local mores, for example, with respect to clothing, in general not wearing revealing clothing which is either tight or low-cut, and covering their arms, legs and perhaps also their heads (cf. Cook 2005). In contrast, it was rarely addressed that men should respect the local culture, although a few male respondents spoke about showing respect to older men.…”

“…For those who used English as a lingua franca, language was less relevant as a reason to socialize with other expats. Instead, culture, education and lifestylethat is, sharing a Western lifestyle (Cook 2007) -mattered. Some mentioned that they wanted to spend time with people who were familiar with their lifestyle and values.…”

Canadian development workers, transnational encounters and cultures of cosmopolitanism

“…Except for two, all the women (but none of the men) wore shalwar kameez , the national dress of Pakistan that comprises a long tunic over loose pyjama trousers, with the addition, for women, of a long scarf that drapes over the shoulders. Even though the dominant discourse in the West represents shalwar kameez for women as ‘oppressive’ (Cook, 2005), Andrea ‘found it quite the opposite. I found it very liberating.…”