Appreciation and Rediscovery in Later Years: Dress Codes
As we in the 2010s can see French documentaries on TV about dress codes around the world it is amazing that the clothing theme was a red thread through Rolf Ehrenfels' writings from 1923 on. Ehrenfels' lifelong number one special research theme was women's rights. One of the signs of decay, as he saw it, was the need for women to adjust to an anomalous dress code: being heavy veiled, wearing the burqa, living secluded. Men were sweating in dark, woollen suits to fit in. Ehrenfels insisted that both men and women should stick to the pre- colonial traditions of the tropics which was to leave the upper part of the body uncovered. Ehrenfels lived as he taught and adjusted his dress to the climate but he could only do so in private. In British India there was legislation punishing non- indigenous men for "disgracing European dignity" by wearing e.g. the dhoti. In 1973 the International Anthropological and Ethnological Congress IUAES was held in Chicago presided by Professor Sol Tax (1907- 1995). Dr. Ehrenfels' paper Clothing and Power Abuse was printed in two of the congress volumes. 1975 in War: its causes and correlates . Part 2: Psychological and psychiatric considerations of the etiology of war p. 157-61. 1979 in The Fabrics of Culture: The Anthropology of Clothing and Adornment p. 399-404. Professor Sol Tax presented the 1973 congress in Chicago as the first of the decolonization era and demanded peace research to be a worldwide commitment ever after. The next IUAES congress in 1978 was for the first time held in the third world, in New Delhi, India, presided by Lalita Prasad Vidyarthi (1931- 1985) L. P. Vidyarthi
Read more about this topic: Baron Omar Rolf Von Ehrenfels
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