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Social skins

Orthodoxies and practices of dressing in the early colonial lower Mississippi Valley

Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, dloren{at}fas.harvard.edu

While current anthropological interpretations employ notions of agency to interpret social practices in contact and early colonial period contexts, the interplay of doxa, orthodoxies and heterodoxies is often overlooked. When doxic (or unquestioned) beliefs were challenged during culture contact, attempts were made to reestablish colonial order through the creation of orthodoxies - laws and mandates - meant to police the daily routines of colonial subjects, many of which were viewed as heterodoxies (or inappropriate practices). Implicated in this discourse was the body and practices of dressing, which implied status, race and gender, as well as political, social and sexual interactions. In the case study presented here, I consider how both Native American and French subjects in the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century lower Mississippi Valley created social identities at the intersection of doxic beliefs, orthodoxies regarding clothing and actions and the practices of dressing.

Key Words: colonial Louisiana • creolization • doxa • ethnohistory • Native American-European contact • social theories • the body

Journal of Social Archaeology, Vol. 1, No. 2, 172-189 (2001)
DOI: 10.1177/146960530100100202


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