Lolita: Fashioning Identity, Liberal Selves and the City

本文探讨了时尚、设计和基础设施如何在日益混合的城市社会中塑造文化认同。它关注的是伦敦和东京的洛丽塔亚文化，这是一种跨国现象，已成为多变的全球现代性的一部分。自20世纪80年代以来，日本洛丽塔一直在发展新的隶属关系和社区建设形式，挑战主流社会（Hebdige, 1979），后来也在欧洲扎根（Kawamura, 2012）。值得注意的是，洛丽塔亚文化以其独特的时尚、生活方式和社会性，融合了西方和日本的价值观和美学，在快速变化的趋势背景下似乎具有弹性。这是如何以及为什么可能的？洛丽塔对它的新一代意味着什么？本比较研究将收集新的实证材料，探索伦敦和东京洛丽塔社区的自我建构。它假设洛丽塔把它作为一种社会和美学资源来构建她们所认为的“自由的”、“自主的”自我。这个过程取决于特定的城市地区和世代背景，但也取决于不断变化的时尚产业。本研究关注东京和伦敦社区以及东西方文化转移的复杂动态：英国文化和亚文化影响了洛丽塔美学，严重依赖维多利亚时代的美学和聚会方式（例如下午茶），同时也将Vivienne Westwood等设计师纳入其坐标。受傅柯关于自由主义的物质和文化史研究的启发，本研究将采用微观方法对具体的城市案例进行研究，将其置于英国和日本文化现代化的历史背景中。通过参与观察和半结构化定性访谈收集两个社区的人种学数据，将记录和分析其现有成员的看法和做法。这些数据将有助于理解时尚与城市系统之间的关系，以及自我和社会表现的表现（Goffman, 1990）。

This thesis explores how the role of fashion, design and infrastructure shapes cultural identity in increasingly hybrid urban societies. It focuses on Lolita subculture in London and Tokyo, a transnational phenomenon which has become part of changeable global modernity. Since the 1980s, Japanese Lolitas have been developing new forms of affiliation and community-building, challenging mainstream society (Hebdige, 1979), later taking roots also in Europe (Kawamura, 2012). It is remarkable that Lolita subculture, with its particular fashion, lifestyle and sociality which merged Western and Japanese values and aesthetics, appears to be resilient in the context of fast-changing trends. How and why is this possible? What does Lolita mean for its new generations? This comparative study will gather new empirical materials, exploring the making of self in the Lolita communities of London and Tokyo. It hypothesises that Lolitas use it as a social and aesthetical resource to construct what they see as "liberal", "autonomous" selves. This process depends on particular urban localities and generational contexts, but also on the changing fashion industry. This study focuses on Tokyo and London communities and the complex dynamics of East-West cultural transfer: British culture and subcultures influenced Lolita aesthetics, heavily relying on Victorian aesthetics and ways of gathering (e.g. afternoon tea), while also incorporating designers such as Vivienne Westwood in their coordinates. Inspired by Foucaultian work on the material and cultural history of liberalism, this study will adopt a micro approach on specific urban case studies, contextualising them in the history of British and Japanese cultural modernisation. Gathering ethnographic data on both communities through participant observation and semi-structured qualitative interviews, it will document and analyse the perceptions and practices of their current members. This data will help understand the relationship between fashion and urban systems and the presentation of the self and social performativity (Goffman, 1990).