Nappy hair in the diaspora: Exploring the cultural politics of hair among women of African descent

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether hair texture and hairstyle choice have symbolic meanings among women of African descent. Hair is a personal yet public pronouncement about identity. This work is an effort to understand how group identity is formed and maintained through everyday experiences in the African Diaspora.;This dissertation addresses two key questions: (1) Are there shared symbolic meanings that women of African descent associate with their hair texture and hairstyle choice? (2) If shared meanings exist, do they form the basis of a cultural belief domain among women of African descent?;To answer these questions, data collection involved participant observation, interviews, pile sorts, free lists, electronic surveys, digital storytelling techniques, ethnographic film and photography, and an online experiment. These data-collection methods provided for a deeper understanding of the underlying symbolic and not simply the "stated" meaning attributed to different hair textures and styles by African-descended women.;Asking how hair textures and styles serve to help African-descended women carve out unique racial, gendered, social, and economic identities is critical to our understanding of what it means to be a woman of African descent. Thus, any attempts at understanding the lived experiences of Black women will ultimately help us in defining the parameters of the African Diaspora.;The data from this research reveal that hair is a cultural domain for women of African descent. Additionally, within this cultural domain hair texture is utilized as a way to assess an individual's racial status. So hair texture is used to race or de-race individuals symbolically. I found that hairstyles also transmit tacit messages about sexual orientation, gender, social status, religion and politics. Women of African descent use hair to symbolize their social, cultural, political, and ethnic identities. For this group of women the material culture of hair serves as a way to extend their personal lives into the public.