Transcultural body spaces: re-inventing and performing headwrap practice among young Congolese women in London

This article examines embodied representation of race, ethnicity, and gender, questioning ideas of cultural appropriation. Using the London-based Congolese transnational fashion brand Kiyana Wraps as a case study, the article addresses how young Congolese designers re-invent their cultural heritage to conceive the label stylisation and construct meanings of Blackness/Africanness. The article also explores the brand’s social spaces, where the headwrap ritual is used by different actors to perform hybrid identities. In addition, wearing the headwrap reveals symbolic metaphors of empowerment, through which intertwined ‘feminist’ and ‘feminine’ identities are evoked. The paper examines how Congolese women are creatively taking inspiration from the environment of London to produce innovative fashion trajectories as lived socio-cultural experiences. It argues how the headwrap ritual signifies an aesthetic and material process through which specific racial and ethnic boundaries are transcended, fabricating transcultural body spaces which encompass individuals with diverse cultural backgrounds

Procedure for objective estimation of quality inspection for maintenance

The paper deals with the design, realisation and testing of the procedure for the quantitative as sessment of the quality of maintenance enterprises, with reference to a judiciary case in which managers and technicians from two maintenance/inspection companies were subjected to investigation following a fatal technical plant accident, which occurred in 2003. © 2007 Taylor & Francis Group

Capitolato speciale d’appalto ascensori e montacarichi

(versione informatizzata