Basotho blankets: ownership and appropriation

Basotho blankets were brought to my attention on the first day of my fieldwork on fashion designers’ ventures in Johannesburg in 2017. This happened as my Airbnb hosts, upon hearing the reason for my visit, reached for a Basotho blanket, explaining that nowadays people make cushion covers and other items out of the traditional blankets. I appreciated their gesture but was thinking that their specimen was rather far from my interest in contemporary fashion. Curiously, the blankets continued popping up, unsolicited, during my ensuing fieldwork. The topic remained marginal to my main research interests but continued to tease me to the extent that I decided to tell my version of the blankets’ story and thereby attach myself to a chain of several others with a similar urge.

One reason for the topicality of the Basotho blankets in the late 2010s was their then recent adaptations by Louis Vuitton and in the Marvel/Disney movie Black Panther (2018). The blankets were originally brought to the region of South Africa by European traders in the nineteenth century, and they became so ingrained in the Basotho people's practices in Lesotho that today they are considered an iconic feature of Basotho culture. The blankets are currently manufactured and trademarked by Aranda Textile Mills, which is located in Johannesburg and owned by a family of Italian descent. In addition to the above-mentioned global conglomerates, in recent years the blankets have been adapted by local and foreign small-scale fashion entrepreneurs. The diversity of the actors involved makes up a complex field of claims and counter-claims to the blankets. This article delves into the actors’ work on the blankets, their claims of entitlement, as well as expressions of appropriation.

The broader aim of the article is to offer a theoretical framework for the processes by which various actors claim ownership of ‘cultural’ or ‘heritage’ items, appropriate them, and transform their value. Anthropological and archaeological research has contributed to the scholarly debate on cultural appropriation a view that emphasizes the inevitably contested quality of ownership claims, the analysis of which requires an understanding of their particular sociohistorical contexts (e.g. Brown 2003; J.L. Comaroff & Comaroff 2009; Geismar 2015; Harrison 2013; Meskell 2012; Smith 2006; van de Port & Meyer 2018). This article adds to the discussion an approach that considers ‘regimes of value’ (e.g. Appadurai 1986; J. Comaroff & Comaroff 2006) as providing yet another important context for the involved, differently situated and empowered actors’ efforts and claims.

I will revise earlier uses of the concept ‘regimes of value’ to capture their institutional, coexisting, and often cross-regional character. I define regimes of value as institutionalized ideologies of the actions and actors that have the capacity to bestow an object with value. The regimes provide contexts for the actors’ ‘scale-making projects’ (Tsing 2000), which typically take place across the various regimes to effect value transformation. The foundational regime in this case is what I call the Basotho world, whose practices invest the blankets with specific cultural value and meaning. The other regimes of value, most of which are different forms of capitalism, rely on the Basotho world for their own value creation. At issue here is what Tsing has called ‘salvage accumulation’ (2015: 63): in other words, the creation of capitalist value from non-capitalist forms. The example of the blankets also sheds light on the fact that claims of entitlement, ownership, and appropriation often accompany and can constitute scale-making projects in and of themselves.

The repeating phrase in the ownership and appropriation debate in this case is the actors’ stated or perceived willingness or unwillingness to ‘tell the story’ of the blankets. The story necessarily highlights some historical and contemporary actors, thereby depicting and foregrounding some origins and originators and overshadowing others. Consequently, the question of whose story is being told and who are being silenced when presenting an object to wider audiences is central to the experience of appropriation. I suggest that this applies to the struggle over the ownership of cultural or heritage objects more generally: a central question is who gets to tell their story, whose story is heard, and who are included in the story and thereby recognized as essential contributors to the object's meaning and value.

The word ‘Basotho’ refers to the Southern Sotho people, after whom present-day Lesotho is named. In the early nineteenth century, the area comprised several chiefdoms, of which the one led by Chief Moshoeshoe emerged as especially influential (Keen 1975). It was known as Basutoland during British rule, which extended from 1868 (when it was proclaimed a British Protectorate and later a British Crown Colony) until independence in 1966, when it became the Kingdom of Lesotho. The Basotho whose views and work I discuss in this article are fashion designers who permanently reside in South Africa but trace their descent to Basotho through one or both of their parents. My first-hand material lacks the perspectives of the Basotho migrant labourers who intermittently reside in South Africa as well as the Lesotho-residing Basotho. In an attempt to remedy this, I have used views expressed in online blogs and journals. With Aranda representatives’ views included, the story of the blankets constructed here foremost relies on the perspectives of the actors located in Johannesburg and one (central) actor in Port Elizabeth in South Africa. The article follows the Sesotho language practice in using the word ‘Mosotho’ to refer to a singular person and the word Basotho to refer to many Sotho, or the people as a whole.

Conceptual framework

Since their introduction to the region of South Africa, the blankets have moved across geographical regions and ‘spheres of exchange’, in the process being ‘converted’ from manufactured and trade items into gift, ritual, and mundane objects, and nowadays also fashion and museum items. Bohannan (1959) first used the concepts ‘spheres of exchange’ and ‘conversion’ to analyse the culturally prescribed circulation of objects and services in the Nigerian Tiv people's economy at the end of the 1940s. Later scholars have amended Bohannan's stable, localized, and culturalist view. Appadurai (1986) sought to develop the model theoretically by emphasizing politics and competition over the control of exchange spheres: the rivals to those in control would constantly seek to reform objects’ routes by arranging diversions to their conventional exchange paths for their own benefit. He introduced the term ‘regimes of value’ to point out that economic spheres and shifts in exchange objects’ paths, status, and value are a matter of such manoeuvring. Yet his usage of the term was somewhat ambiguous, and at times (Appadurai 1986: 57) he refers to regimes of value as being confined to cultural boundaries, which resembles Bohannan's culturalist view.

Guyer (2004), for her part, revised Bohannan's analysis to show that what he had considered a bounded socioeconomic system was in fact an integral part of wider trading networks. According to Guyer, the Tiv people actively participated in Atlantic African regional trade circuits because it enabled them to make gain at the junctures and disjunctures of divergent registers and scales of value. Guyer thus replaced the schematic views of Bohannan and Appadurai with a historical and processual view that emphasized the prevalence of multiple registers and scales that people were used to dealing with.

I root my discussion in this legacy because each of the above-mentioned scholars highlights the importance of junctures for value transformations and for augmentation of gain and control. They critically differed, however, in their views of just what such junctures demarcate: exchange spheres, exchange paths, or scales and registers of value. I will apply and revise the term ‘regimes of value’ to acknowledge and draw attention to the diverse institutional frameworks involved in value making. In Appadurai's text, ‘regimes of value’ were rather weakly defined as the ‘conditions under which economic objects circulate … in space and time’ (1986: 4). Jean and John Comaroff (2006) used the term more analytically to refer to different cultural systems in which certain items were invested with the capacity to objectify value because they could make or break social relations. Their focus was on fine but significant place-specific sociocultural changes that the encounter of the different regimes brought about.

In distinction to Bohannan's, Appadurai's, and Comaroff and Comaroff's focus on objects, I approach regimes of value as institutionalized ideologies of the acts and actors capable of bestowing an object with value. Rather than place-specific, the regimes coexist and can span regions and societies, even the globe. In the case that I discuss, the objects undergo qualitative transformations as they are moved from one regime to another to fit in with its criteria of value. The alterations can be substantial or symbolic (most often both) and their quality can be contested by others. I use the term ‘transformation’ instead of ‘conversion’ to acknowledge such qualitative (or qualified) alterations in the objects.

The regimes diverge in their social and symbolic bases, standards and registers of value, geographical span and renown, and power to constrain other actors’ ventures. They constitute an ‘ecosystem’ for value shifts, yet one that is hierarchical because of the regimes’ differential reach and power, and consequently their differential affordance of monetary and symbolic gain, or what I call their ‘spatiotemporal control’ (Munn 1986).

I will use the term ‘scale-making projects’ (Tsing 2000) for the efforts by actors to transfer items and legitimate such transfers across regimes. In this case, scale-making projects are often about actors’ ventures to move their products towards a higher regime of value. It is not uncommon, however, for them to try to work across and keep a footing in more than one regime simultaneously, in which case they may be involved in several scale-making projects. Another form of being involved in multiple scale-making projects is the imaginary or conceptual rooting of one's products in a localized place and origins while attempting to reach out to cosmopolitan markets and audiences.

With the term ‘scale-making projects’, Tsing drew attention to the fact that even the biggest world-making dreams and schemes, such as those aimed at globalization, engage with a multitude of differently located, interested, and empowered actors, which eventually brings about transformations in the actors, goals, perspectives, and scales. In the case I discuss, the involved actors are aware of each other and influence each other's efforts, claims, possibilities, and perceptions, even though they have not necessarily met in person. On the lower rungs of the hierarchy, however, justification for working across the regimes does require establishing relations or relatedness to them. In addition to the actual social relationships, actors can emphasize their relatedness through verbal arguments or claims. In contrast, those in the highest regimes deny their relatedness to or dependence on the lower regimes and their actors, appearing autonomous in their value creation: this is an institutionalized ideology protected by legal entitlements that enable a company and its brand to emerge as the origin and originator of a product. This ideology is challenged by those in the lower regimes, and increasingly so in the age of global media, social media, and an awareness of cultural rights. Indeed, appropriation claims spring from the perception that some essential source for a product's value is being concealed and exposed as someone else's creative accomplishment, expanding the latter's fame and gain, or ‘spatiotemporal control’.

In the Basotho blanket case, the upper tiers in the hierarchy of the regimes of value consist of different forms of capitalism, listed here in ascending order in terms of their reach, power, and gain: first is the mercantile or merchant capitalist regime, in which value is created through the cross-regional circulation of trade goods; second is the industrial capitalist regime, in which value is generated through owning the means of production; and third is the rentier capitalist regime, in which value is created through exclusive legal ownership of rights (trademarks and copyrights), enabling the collection of rents. This scheme is ideal typical: in practice, the involved upper-tier actors seek to create value from more than one of the above-listed forms of capitalism. Below these tiers is the small-scale creative entrepreneurship regime, or what can also be called the petty capitalist regime, in which value is created through selling one's own creations produced by employed labour. Finally, seemingly at the bottom but simultaneously a foundational source of value for all the upper tiers, is the regime of the Basotho world, in which the blankets’ use in rituals and gift-giving invests them with the value to grow persons and relationships. This last-mentioned regime is the only one that is putatively ‘spatiocultural’, as its specific blanket-related practices and meanings are confined to Basotho culture (although similar themes and meanings related to the practice of covering appear in other African cultures: see, e.g., Pietilä 2007; Weiss 1996).

A history of Basotho blankets

There are various circulating stories about the introduction of the blankets into the region. Several of them depict the first blankets as gifts given to Chief Moshoeshoe by a European visitor (the ‘origins’ stories differ on the visitor's identity). The verifiable early history is patchy at best, but it is likely that the factory-manufactured blankets were brought by European traders or missionaries who both started visiting the region in the 1830s and courted the goodwill of Chief Moshoeshoe for their operations via gift-giving (Danziger 1979: 45; Keen 1975: 215-17; Sanders 1975: 46-7).¹

Once introduced, blankets soon started to replace the animal skins that the Basotho had used for clothing and to wear as cloaks.² The Basotho readily accepted the blankets for several reasons. The number of cattle and thus hides had decreased due to wars against the Zulus and a rinderpest epidemic (Keen 1975: 117-18, 291; Rosenberg & Weisfelder 2013: 92). Beyond practical functions, blankets adopted the role of hides in the symbolically central practice of covering, considered essential for the (re)production of Basotho life. Covering is believed to generate the heat required for the maturation and growth of human beings as well as various culturally essential substances, such as tobacco, meat, beer, and clay (Bosko 1981). It has thus been, and remains, a recurring theme in the life-cycle rituals in which the protagonist – such as the bride, the mother after giving birth, or a young person after their initiation ritual – is wrapped in a new blanket given by their kinsfolk.

The blankets were thus integrated into the Basotho cosmology or regime of value, in which they were associated with life-generating potency. In addition, the chiefs and the commoners adopted European commodities for their own social and political ends. Chief Moshoeshoe perceived in European visitors and the ‘European way of life’ (Sekhooa) a source of prosperity and protection against the intrusions of neighbouring peoples (Sanders 1975: 47, 126). Common Basotho men, many of whom had towards the end of the nineteenth century become reliant on migrant labour in South African mines, started bringing home blankets and clothing that they had bought in the mining stores (Danziger 1979: 14-16, 91; Rosenberg & Weisfelder 2013: 92). While subjected to the wider political economic powers and risking their health and lives in the mines, the men also felt heroic in being able to return home with desired goods (Coplan 2006). Eventually, different blankets also came to mark status and regional distinctions as well as specific ritual phases (Danziger 1979: 47; Segoete 2014). Thus, while the early European visitors turned manufactured items into gifts to establish a relationship with the chief and his realm, the chiefs and their subjects eagerly appropriated the blankets and other commodities to mark and enhance their relationships and distinction.

European traders played a vital role in the dissemination of blankets among the Basotho. The ones with a long-standing influence were Donald and Douglas Fraser, the sons of a wool merchant from Ipswich, in the United Kingdom. The brothers opened a trading store in Basutoland that sold blankets and other goods, a business eventually known as ‘D. and D.H. Fraser Limited’ (Danziger 1979: 21), or ‘Frasers’ (Rosenberg & Weisfelder 2013: 93). Started as part of what I call the mercantile regime, their business scaled up to incorporate merchant capitalist features as they began to shape products and find producers for specific markets. Frasers became one of the dominant trading businesses in Lesotho for more than sixty years, with ventures also in South Africa (Rosenberg & Weisfelder 2013: 162). In the 1880s, it contracted the British company Wormald and Walker to manufacture blankets specifically for Basotho. Eventually, this led to the launch of the first brand of Basotho blankets in 1897: it was and still is called ‘Victoria England’, so named to mark Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee (Danziger 1979: 45-6; Rosenberg & Weisfelder 2013: 162). Of the eight brands existing today, Victoria England and Seanamarena are the most popular ones (Myrtle 1995: 205; Rosenberg & Weisfelder 2013: 93).

Frasers closed in 1991. Aranda Textile Mills ultimately took over the production of the blankets and is now their exclusive manufacturer. The company was established by the Italian Magni family, who moved to South Africa after their textile factory in Italy was destroyed during the Second World War. The current owners are descendants of the founders, and the factory is located in Johannesburg: the Basotho blankets constitute approximately 5 per cent of its total production. At Aranda, the industrial capitalist ownership of the means of production is merged with the rentier capitalist ownership of rights and brand, as will be elaborated on below.

Contemporary actors and adaptations

Aranda Textile Mills

Aranda has created the ‘Basotho heritage blankets’ trademark and registered the designs as trademarks and wordmarks in the European Union, in the United States, and on the local market. To cover its different uses, the company has registered the designs in the categories of blankets, clothing, and bags. The tags on the blankets state ‘Original Royal Quality’ as proof of their authenticity. Aranda has thus registered the label ‘heritage’ for the blankets and its claim on it; in common parlance, they are known as ‘Basotho blankets’, however.

Interestingly, in our conversations, Tom Kritzinger of Aranda kept on depicting the company's concern and interest in the blanket business in broader terms than those confined to legal ownership. He emphasized the role of Frasers and Aranda as long-term custodians of the blankets, as well as his own family history within the companies. He told me that he was introduced to Basotho blankets ‘at the tender age of 7’, when his father was working for Frasers. Kritzinger himself worked for Frasers in the 1970s and 1980s, moving to Aranda Textiles in the early 1990s as the marketing and sales director. Having retired from that job, he continues as the manager of exports and the Basotho segment at Aranda.

Kritzinger repeatedly used the word ‘passion’ to describe his and Aranda's involvement in the Basotho blanket trade, saying, for instance: ‘This is not just a business, this is a life passion’. He also described the blanket-wearing tradition as ‘the best-kept secret’ and a ‘most amazing story’ in ‘the heart of Africa’ that ‘needs to be told to the world’. Aware of their cultural significance, Kritzinger used to cite the Sesotho phrase ‘the blanket is life’ (kobo ke bophelo). Aranda's story of the blankets depicts them as a Basotho custom, one in which new blanket designs are being developed and introduced but rather rarely and under careful control of the company. Aranda's marketing pictures show Basotho people wearing the blankets in the customary style, wrapped around their shoulders (Fig. 1). Kritzinger explained that, like Frasers, Aranda has sought to build a relationship with the Basotho royal family by sharing ideas for new designs and making donations to Queen ‘Masenate's charity trust (cf. Danziger 1979: 52; Rosenberg & Weisfelder 2013: 162). He also maintained that the ‘Basotho people’ act as arbiters of new design ideas and informers regarding counterfeit products.

All these assertions – Aranda's respectful relationship with the Basotho royalty and ‘people’; the blanket business as an inherited undertaking; and Aranda as an envoy for spreading the ‘amazing story’ of the blankets to the world – add personal, emotional, and responsibility-laden dimensions to Aranda's legal title. This is not to say the assertions lack sincerity, but they also shift the focus from economic interests to sociomoral custodianship and ownership and serve to anticipate and pre-empt potential accusations of cultural appropriation. They also speak of Aranda's awareness of their delicate mediator position between non-capitalist and capitalist regimes, depicting the company as related to and authorized by the people whose ‘heritage’ they sell.

As the trademark owner, Aranda seeks to watch the market for counterfeits and unauthorized or inappropriate adaptations. The company seems to be somewhat selective in its pursuance of trademark violations, however, as discussed in more detail below. I interpret this selectiveness as Aranda's attempt to straddle the various regimes by associating itself with specific regimes and subfields within them.

The most well known of the local fashion designers reworking the blankets is Thabo Makhetha. She was born in Lesotho to Basotho parents, but grew up in South Africa, and makes women's jackets, capes, and dresses out of the blankets (Fig. 2). Mosotho Teboho Moekoa uses the blankets to make bags and scarves, and Bokang Ramoreboli, a New York-based designer from Lesotho, makes jackets, coats, ponchos, and kimonos to sell through her Allflo Couture label. As I asked Kritzinger about Aranda's approach to such adaptations, he explained that the company has chosen to ‘embrace’ and ‘work with’ these designers, considering their creations to be ‘extensions of the blanket-wearing tradition’. As a sign of acceptance, Aranda lets them buy blankets directly from the factory, which they do not usually allow for buyers of small quantities.

What Aranda does not approve of is the reprinting of the blanket designs on another fabric: Kritzinger described such an act as ‘sacrilegious’ – his use of the religious term framing the act as a deep insult to the Basotho culture rather than a trademark infringement. The company has taken legal action in the past against people for printing the blanket designs on sportswear. As I asked whether printing the designs would be acceptable for a high-end designer or a designer of Basotho descent, he maintained that they would take legal action or at least tell them to stop such activity.

During my fieldwork, I came across two cases in which blanket designs had been printed on fabric. One of them (by a producer of casualwear or streetwear) was pursued by Aranda, while the other one (by a high-end designer) was not. The first case goes back some years, when the South African streetwear label Butan Wear had the corncob motif of a blanket in the Seanamarena brand printed on a fabric of which they made sweatshirts they entitled ‘Mountain Kingdom’ (Fig. 3). According to Julian Kubel, the label's owner, they soon had to withdraw the garments from the market because Aranda threatened to sue them. Butan Wear then created another print with designs that resembled those in the Basotho blanket but were not copies of them and entitled the sweatshirts ‘Mountain Panther’ (Fig. 4).

Johannesburg-based designer Ephraim Molingoana similarly reproduced the blanket designs. Molingoana owns the well-known high-end fashion label Ephymol and claims Basotho ethnicity through his late father. His 2018 collection featured several Basotho blanket designs printed on fabric, with his business logo added in their interstices. The fabric was used to make men's shirts, trousers, and suits (Fig. 5). While following the process of him preparing the collection, I asked Molingoana if he was not concerned about rights infringements: he told me that he was entitled to use the blankets because they belonged to his heritage. The only slight concern he had was that someone might claim he was imitating Vuitton's Basotho blanket-inspired collection from the previous year. Ephymol's collection was well received and generated a large number of orders – with no reaction from Aranda.³

It is possible but improbable that Aranda did not know about Molingoana's collection, as it was widely publicized in the South African media. Was Aranda drawing a distinction between a luxury designer and a streetwear designer? What role did the latter designer's Basotho ethnicity play in Aranda's consideration? In effect, however, through its selective acceptance and ‘embracing’ of particular designers’ work, Aranda associated itself and its products with certain fields – the high-end fashion realm and the Basotho world – and disassociated itself from the (local) streetwear fashion field. I regard these cases as examples of Aranda's balancing acts and scale-making projects at the junctures of diverse regimes of value: that is, as its attempts to assert relatedness to the regime of the Basotho world and the high-profile factions of the creative entrepreneurs’ regime while reaching out to the global markets from its own niche in the capitalist regime. Simultaneously, in accepting certain ‘extensions’ and rejecting others, it was managing the symbolic and mental images and associations of its trademarked product. These interpretations will find further validation in my discussion of Aranda's approach to other involved actors.

Brands and appropriation

To understand fully the claims of ownership in this case, we need to consider how changes in the legal and popular understandings of brands have enabled them to emerge as origins and originators of products. Recent scholarship has described brands as having assumed a ‘new productive role’ (Lury 2004: 12) and become an ‘intangible asset’ for their owners (Moor 2007). This shift involves the blurring of the earlier distinction between intellectual property and trademark, where the former was the vehicle for acknowledging and protecting the ‘originality’ of new works and the latter for identifying commodities’ ‘origins’ and to distinguish one company's products and brand from those of another. As part of this development, brands – regarded as trademarks – have come to attain features of intellectual property, whereby they index the originality and the quality of the company rather than the origins of the product (Craciun 2019). This means that the brand-owning company emerges as a ‘quasi-author’ (Coombe 1998: 61) and the actual origins and producers of the branded commodity become obscured. In addition to having thus encroached on the field of producers, brands increasingly involve consumers as co-producers of their value: by passionately integrating and promoting commodities in their lifeworlds, consumers do unpaid labour and simultaneously pay a premium for the product to the brand (Foster 2013). These developments have led to a ‘dematerialization’ of brands (Manning 2010) and to the increased importance of consumers’ impressions of them for their business and value (Moore 2003: 343). One might say that brands significantly rely on selling an enticing story of themselves along with that of their products. At the same time, as MacLochlainn (2019) has noted, the increased immateriality and indistinctness of brands, and especially the gap between the branded commodity and its production, opens a space for appropriation and reinterpretation by other actors.

I suggest that in the Basotho blanket case, all the actors can be viewed as brand-builders. This applies both to those whose businesses are legally acknowledged as brands (i.e., Aranda, Vuitton, and Disney/Marvel) and the smaller ones whose businesses are not legally protected by trademark. I call them all ‘brand-builders’ because they are attempting to establish or expand their ownership by claiming the role of the originator or an essential contributor to the product and its story. Such claims’ gaps and silences about – or appropriation of – other actual or potential originators make them susceptible to counter-claims and contests. Disney and Vuitton circumvent Aranda's legal claim by arguably creating products that do not infringe on Aranda's or the Basotho people's rights but instead ‘tell’ stories of their own authorship. Aranda positions itself as the long-term enabler and custodian of the Basotho legacy; Sean Shuter and Jason Storey position themselves as explorers who discovered the blankets and discerned their value as they were globetrotting. The version of the story told by Aranda and these entrepreneurs depicts the blankets as an age-old, ‘secret’ custom and themselves as the key actors in disclosing and transmitting it to the world. The designers of Basotho ethnicity, for their part, seek to appear as originators of contemporary products that tell new stories, which challenge and add to, although do not deny, the mythologized origin story.

The foregrounding of a brand as an important originator overshadows other producers’ contributions to the product and its value. This creates the ground for experiences and claims of appropriation, as exemplified by many designers’ and part of the wider public's reactions to Vuitton's collection and Shuter's and Jason's businesses. In contrast, the Black Panther film was considered a form of recognition rather than appropriation of African creativity, as it was framed by a captivating story of what blacks could be without the exploitative history of colonialism and its legacy. In terms of the Basotho blankets, the audiences were dazzled by their simultaneously traditional and ultramodern depiction in the film. As such, the blankets appeared as ‘coverings’ with the potential to magically contain and span space and time – or, to borrow from Munn (1986), to expand ‘spatiotemporal control’. The global brand seemed an apt medium to publicize such a dormant capacity of the Basotho ‘culture’, while the blankets in their own small way contributed to the fame and foothold of the global brand. Indeed, brands and their scale-making projects can be said to strive for an expansion of their spatiotemporal control, extending their reach geographically and in consumers’ minds. The renown of the brand and its legally ensured rights enable rent collection, especially for the actors at the top of the hierarchy, whereas those unable to claim or rely on legal rights try to expand their fame and reach – or brand – by claiming authorship or participation in it through an association with a more powerful brand.

Conclusion

Like Wakanda, the imaginary country pictured in the Black Panther film, Lesotho is a faraway, small country in Africa with a cultural treasure not many have heard of but that keeps fascinating those who learn about it. The blanket tradition makes for a good story, and its aesthetic is appealing: no wonder many are enticed to convey it to the ‘world’. The imported blankets were initially appropriated by Chief Moshoeshoe and Basotho migrant labourers to reveal their connections to and feats in the wider world. The blankets soon spread among commoners and gained continuing symbolic significance in the reproduction of Basotho life and the making and marking of social distinctions.

Contemporary actors appropriate the blankets and the story of their cultural significance: in seeking to translate non-capitalist forms into capitalist value, they represent different forms of ‘salvage accumulation’ (Tsing 2015: 63). I have depicted the involved actors as operating in and across various regimes of value, aiming to expand ‘spatiotemporal control’ (Munn 1986) through their ‘scale-making projects’ (Tsing 2000). I define regimes of value as institutionalized ideologies of the actions and actors capable of bestowing an object with value: that is, on the essential origins and originators of its value. The involved regimes are perceived to form a hierarchy because of the differences in their geographical reach, power to control other actors’ efforts, and potential for economic and symbolic gain. This hierarchy is as ideological as the regimes, reflecting the value attached to and accrued from the expansion of spatiotemporal control.

The Basotho world, with its blanket-related practices, forms the foundational regime of value from which actors operating in the higher regimes draw. The actors close to the Basotho world justify their commodification and scale-making efforts by emphasizing their role as contributors to the value of the blankets as well as their relatedness to the Basotho ‘source’. Aranda stresses its amicable relationship with the Basotho royalty, people, and designers; the fashion designers emphasize their Basotho ethnicity; and the foreign small-scale entrepreneurs appeal to their relatedness to Aranda and the Basotho royal family. Such assertions are ways for the actors to claim entitlement to the blankets and their story and simultaneously to pre-empt appropriation claims. In contrast, the actors at the apex of the hierarchy appear as autonomous and independent of those in the lower-tier regimes, even though they rely on the latter's work, especially the practices of the Basotho world and the manufacture of the blankets by Aranda. The top actors’ claim of independent authorship of their products is based on their regimes’ legally protected ideology of the originality of creative work as well as their sociogeographical distance from the Basotho world. The development in the legal and popular understanding of brands has further muddled the questions of ownership and authorship, as it has enabled brands to appear as the authors, origins, and originators of their products. I have suggested that by claiming authorship of or an essential contribution to the story of the blankets, all the involved actors are posing as brands.

The legal frameworks and distance from the Basotho world do not protect the top actors from other actors’ and the wider public's evaluations and contesting claims. Indeed, the experience of appropriation, or what is described as someone ‘just taking’ the blankets ‘without telling their story’, derives from the perception that some of the blankets’ significant origins of meaning and value are concealed and exposed as someone else's accomplishment. Thus, the Louis Vuitton collection, presented as a unique creative work of the fashion house and its top creatives, was widely considered a form of appropriation among black designers in Johannesburg because it obscured its Basotho source. In contrast, although Black Panther and its story's ownership is thoroughly claimed by Walt Disney, the film's reception was enthusiastic and positive because it appeared to acknowledge African originality and producers. In envisioning an alternative black history and future imbued with power, vitality, and opulence, the film was conceived to disclose the hitherto hidden qualities and spectacular potential of Africans. With this narrative framing, Basotho blankets appeared to communicate an Afropolitan and Afro-futuristic story and not their usual mythico-historical origins story. Somewhat paradoxically, capitalist expansion can thus sometimes be experienced as a spatiotemporal expansion and recognition of the non-capitalist forms of value it appropriates. For the global brand, the gains of such expansion are economic (profits and rents) and symbolic (fame and images in consumers’ minds), which feed into each other; for the lower-tier actors, the gain is primarily symbolic and potentially economic.

Central to the experience of appropriation is thus the question of which origins, originators, and social relations are being ‘revealed’ (cf. Strathern 1990) and acknowledged as contributors to the value of a product and its story and which are being silenced or overshadowed as it is taken across junctures of regimes and presented to new and wider audiences. There are gradations of appropriation in this case. Here, we have especially learnt about fashion designers’ views because of the focus of my research material; they are in a position to voice their reproach and opinions on social media and in the South African mass media as well. As creatives and brand owners, they simultaneously shade the contribution of the seamstresses and tailors to the products. These latter actors, along with the blanket factory workers, remain invisible, their labour facilitating the generation of surplus value by their employers (Marx 2010 [1864]). Probably, some inhabitants of the Basotho world also feel appropriated and ‘abjected’ (Ferguson 1999) by the commodification and glorification of their culture by outsiders with little tangible ‘given back’.

Apart from feelings of anger and delight, the appropriations by the global conglomerates also transformed perceptions among South African designers and audiences about the ‘beauty’ and the value of the blankets and other cultural items surrounding them. The Black Panther film and Louis Vuitton garments inspired designers to make their own adaptations of them and include other ethnic references in their work. The South African consumers who bought up Vuitton's collection in boutiques chose to partake in the global scale of the fashion house's fame rather than lament its appropriation of domestically generated value. These all are examples of local (re)appropriation of global corporations, products, and regimes.