Clothing sociality: Materiality and the everyday among the Kuna of Panama

Abstract

Kuna women’s making and using molakana, the female blouses that have long intrigued visitors and collectors, provide evidence for discussing how the life cycle of persons and things function as aspects of one another. Kept in the main world museums and collected by private individuals, molakana have become famous worldwide. Studies of molakana have mainly focused on their significance as an index of Kuna identity or as wealth repositories linked to forms of female handicrafts. This article looks at the everyday dimensions of mola as part of the Kuna female wardrobe, and examines the overlooked aspect of their life cycle in relation to the wider domain of Kuna sociality. The attention is on the experiential values of molakana and on the ways in which they materialize relations and the aesthetics of Kuna sociality. The ethos of social life unfolds by means of the specific material practices through which molakana and social relations are sewn together.