
Trading Worlds
Afghan Merchants Across Modern Frontiers
Magnus Marsden(Author)
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd
Will be published approx. on 25. February 2016
Book
Hardback
480 pages
978-1-84904-363-2 (ISBN)
Description
Trading Worlds is an anthropological study of a little understood yet rapidly expanding global trading diaspora, namely the Afghan merchants of Afghanistan, Central Asia and Europe. It contests one-sided images that depict traders from this and other conflict regions as immoral profiteers, the cronies of warlords or international drug smugglers. It shows, rather, the active role these merchants play in an ever-more globalised political economy. Afghan merchants, the author demonstrates, forge and occupy critical eco- nomic niches, both at home and abroad: from the Persian Gulf to Central Asia, to the ports of the Black Sea; and in global cities such as Istanbul, Moscow and London, the traders' activities are shaping the material and cultural lives of the di- verse populations among whom they live. Through an exploration of the life histories, trading activities and everyday experiences of these mobile merchants, Magnus Marsden shows that traders' worlds are informed by complex forms of knowledge, skill, ethical sensibility, and long-lasting human relationships that often cut across and dissolve boundaries of nation, ethnicity, religion and ideology.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 138 mm
Weight
750 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-84904-363-2 (9781849043632)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Magnus Marsden is a senior lecturer in Social Anthropology at SOAS, University of London. He has spent fifteen years conducting research in both Afghanistan and Pakistan and, with Benjamin Hopkins, is the author of Fragments of the Afghan Frontier and editor of Beyond Swat: History, Society and Economy Along the Afghanistan- Pakistan Frontier.