Slavery in Africa: Interpretation and illustration

Lovejoy, Paul E. Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. xvi + 349 pp. including maps, bibliography, and index. $39.50 cloth; $12.95 paper.

Bonner, Philip. Kings, Commoners and Concessionaires: The Evolution and Dissolution of the Nineteenth Century Swazi State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. x + 315 pp. including maps, bibliography, appendix, and index. $49.50 cloth.

Ross, Robert. Cape of Torments: Slavery and Resistance in South Africa. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983. xi+160 pp. including glossary, bibliography, maps, and index. $19.50 cloth.     

Hierarchies of trade in Yiwu and Dushanbe: The case of an Uzbek merchant family from Tajikistan

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the trading trajectory of an Uzbek family of merchants from Tajikistan. This family runs businesses in both Tajikistan’s capital, Dushanbe, and China’s famous international trading city: Yiwu. The analysis is centred on the accounts placed by Tajikistan’s Uzbek merchants about their historically sustained experience, often across several generations, in trading activities. These merchants’ claims of belonging to a ‘historical’ trading community rather than being ‘newcomers’ to long-distance commerce are articulated in relation to notions of ‘hierarchies of trade’ as they evolve in a twofold relational model linking Yiwu’s Changchun neighbourhood and Dushanbe. I suggest that the forms of conviviality enacted in Yiwu’s Changchun neighbourhood need to be understood in terms of the historical, multinational and transregional contacts that have occurred within the spaces of the former Soviet Union, as well as along the China-Russia and China-Central Asian borders. Equally, the hierarchies of trade of Uzbek merchants from Tajikistan in Yiwu’s Changchun neighbourhood cut-across markers of identity that juxtapose the roles of Tajik and Uzbek communities in Tajikistan’s contemporary politics and economics.     

The dynamics and livelihood implications of illegal mining in Ghana: A critical assessment

Discourses on “illegal” or informal small-scale mining (galamsey) have presented it largely as a menace. Using Ghana as the focus of our study, we present a counter-narrative to the predominant discourse. Employing qualitative in-depth interviews with 193 local galamsey operators, the study found that economic factors coupled with the combative posture of state regulatory agencies explain the persistence of illegal activity. Although galamsey is not problem-free, the study revealed it is the livelihood support base of such communities, providing jobs and incomes to many households. Since mineral-rich local communities, at least, in part, depend on galamsey, the state and its regulatory agencies could collaboratively work with local agencies and mineral-rich communities to fully exploit the hidden treasures in galamsey while reducing the proximate negative effects.     

The politics of violence and trade: Denia and Pisa in the eleventh century

In the eleventh century, as ports and cities expanded their involvement in the Mediterranean, they came into contact and conflict with one another; both were integral parts of the Mediterranean renewal after the relative decline of the early Middle Ages. Of these cities, relations between Pisa and Denia were perhaps the most exemplary of the extremes possible within the new Mediterranean. On the surface, theirs would seem to be merely a series of clashes based on religious friction, jihād, or territorial ambitions, as shown by their conflict over Sardinia. However, when viewed together with diplomatic and commercial relations, it becomes apparent that violence was only a part of the Mediterranean dynamic, and that where conflict did exist it was along new lines. Economic ambitions were becoming the motivating factor, and trade routes and commerce were the new stakes in the medieval Mediterranean.     

Reading fair trade: political ecological imaginary and the moral economy of fair trade foods

This paper begins to explore the changing political geographies of alternative development as practiced and envisioned in the global South. Looking specifically at the growing movement and market for fair trade foods, this form of alternative development has become the moral business of latte drinkers and other reflexive consumers in Europe and the US. Fair trade attempts to re-connect producers and consumers economically, politically, and psychologically through the creation of a transnational moral economy. This re-connection is accomplished through material and semiotic commoditization processes that produce fair trade commodities. The semiotic production of these commodities and their traffic in particular ‘political ecological imaginaries’ is essential to the formation of ethical production-consumption links, acting to also politicize consumption and fair trade eaters. Fair trade's moral economy rides the tension between the ethical relationships it fosters and the need for the wily characteristics of enterprise in the construction of transnational trade networks. Bringing recent work on moral geography to bear, constructing this moral economy is an attempt to facilitate a sense of ‘solidarity in difference’ in the experiences of global economic inequalities between North and South and growers and eaters. At the same time, fair trade networks look to produce an expansive ‘spatial dynamics of concern’ in the fashioning of ethical places of production and consumption. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the continuing dilemmas critical for fair trade and suggestions for further empirical study of fair trade provisioning and alternative development networks.     

Moving beyond the rational choice debate via social capital: The study of illegal private protection

In the context of the epistemological and methodological debates about rational choice (RC) sparked by Green and Shapiro and the subsequent rejoinders, Hindmoor made the theoretical claim that there is now an opportunity for RC to be enhanced and for past debates to be set aside by incorporating different theoretical perspectives into RC. This article presents an example of one context in which this can be done: the study of illegal private protection (IPP) produced by organised criminals and corrupt officials. It extends a rational theory of criminal protection to enable the simultaneous analysis of corrupt protection and augments this approach with theories of social capital (SC). Both positive and negative forms and effects of SC are considered. This approach highlights a middle ground between advocates and critics of RC, demonstrating a capacity to explain patterns in the production of IPP between organisations and across countries.

针对格林、沙皮罗与弗里德曼的否定者所发起的有关理性选择的认识论及方法论论战,辛德摩尔提出一个理论主张：现在正可以通过吸纳不同的视角而弘扬理性选择,以往的辩论可置之一旁。本文讨论了一个可行的案例：有组织犯罪分子造成的非法私人保护。作者应用理性理论于犯罪保护,对腐败保护做了分析,并用社会资本理论扩展了这一方法。作者对社会资本理论的正负短长做了分析。这样的研究强调了介于理性选择理论赞同方与反对方的中间地带,展示对于组织间及跨国非法私人保护的产生的解释能力。     

Exploring trade globalization in the long run: The RICardo project

Initiated in 2004, the RICardo project focuses on bilateral trade data of all the world's countries from the early nineteenth century to the eve of the Second World War. The project includes the construction of a database and the creation of a website. It is a pioneering work in the field of historical trade statistics that aims at providing easy-to-access research material to the scientific community and at attracting a wider public to the history of trade relationships. The article emphasizes the originality of the project and sums up its various aspects by reviewing previous trade databases, clarifying the main features of historical trade statistics, and describing the construction and use of the RICardo website.     

Australian trade policy in an age of globalisation

Arguably, the world trading system has entered a period of greater change and uncertainty in the past two years than at any time since the end of the Cold War. At the same time, Australia faces a range of internal and external challenges to its trade policy, while having lost many of the old 'certainties' guiding its trade agenda. This article identifies four major challenges confronting Australian trade policy now and into the future: the EU agenda to inject self-serving 'governance' mechanisms into the WTO; rises in the demands and influence of developing countries within the WTO; the new trend towards bilateral free trade areas; and increasing opposition to globalisation by groups within society. It assesses the capacity of Australia's trade bureaucracy to manage these issues, warning against expecting too much of the trade policy agenda, particularly in relation to the role it plays within domestic politics in Australia.     

文物走私与文物盗窃非法交易之间的关系

物盗窃、非法交易和走私是物犯罪活动的三个主要环节,为了防范和打击物犯罪活动,有效地遏制物犯罪活动,有必要深入分析物走私与物盗窃、非法交易三之间的关系。