Racial hair: the persistence and resistance of a category

This article analyses how hair and race are entangled both within anthropology and in the commercial world of the billion‐dollar global market for human hair. Focusing in particular on detached hair, it explores the recurring dynamic through which hair is racialized, on the one hand, and resists racialization, on the other. This process is traced in three interrelated contexts, the roots of which are embedded in historical conditions of domination and oppression. The first is that of nineteenth‐ and early twentieth‐century physical anthropology, when hair was thought to provide a key to racial distinctions. The second refers to contemporary black hair cultures in which hair is racialized both in the marketplace, where it is advertised through ethnic signifiers, and in the natural hair movement, which relies on ideas of authenticity based on biological differences. The third context is that of factories in China, where items such as ‘Brazilian’ hair extensions and ‘Afro’ wigs are physically manufactured through combinations of hair and labour that confound ethnic, racial, and national boundaries. By shifting attention to the materiality of hair, the article highlights the enduring materiality of race, exposing its shape‐shifting qualities and persistent ideologies and providing a unique angle onto the dynamics of nature‐culture articulations.