From Nelson Mandela: A Gender Coded Semiotic Reading of a South African Tourist Necklace

Abstract

In 1995, Nelson Mandela gave my grandmother a South African beaded necklace, which she then gave to me. Spurred by its unusual provenance, I analyzed the necklace as both a visually recognizable tourist good produced by indigenous South African women for a tourist market and as a beadwork gift enmeshed in, but not bound by, gendered codes of South African gift-giving practice. Further, I comparatively interpret the necklace within the visual culture of South Africa and the U.S. in the late 20th and early 21st centuries in order to discern the interplay of the necklace with the self-identified gender of those who perceive it. Through these lenses, complemented by self-reflexive narrative that investigates the process by which I made meaning of the necklace, I investigate how this necklace is a form of self-determination promoting women’s global economies.