Dressed identity: reconstructing Myanmar’s cultural heritage through content analysis of traditional clothing

Abstract

Rapid globalisation poses an increasing threat to traditional clothing cultures worldwide, intensifying the urgency of systematic heritage documentation and preservation. This study addresses this challenge by examining Myanmar's underrepresented sartorial heritage through a culturally grounded qualitative content analysis. Drawing on data triangulation across netnographic observation, expert validation, and a purposive review of twenty-two literature sources, the study systematically examined four core cultural dimensions: shape, colour, textile patterns, and cultural context using NVivo 15 for thematic and matrix coding. Theoretically anchored in Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, Hall’s framework of cultural identity, and Appadurai’s theory of cultural flows, the analysis reveals how Myanmar’s traditional clothing functions as a living cultural archive: encoding gender distinctions, class hierarchies, and ceremonial significance through specific garment structures, textile motifs, and colour symbolism. A structured knowledge map was constructed to visually organise and communicate these interconnected cultural attributes, offering a replicable framework for sartorial heritage documentation. Although grounded in a single-country case focused on Bamar mainstream dress traditions, this study contributes a transferable methodological approach to global cultural heritage studies, with implications for digital preservation initiatives, policymaking, and the development of culturally accurate AI representation systems.