The (In)Commodities of Laissez-faire Integration

Trade and Mobility in a Cross-border Market

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2137707
AutoresAminata Niang (0000-0001-8137-7448, University of the Witwatersrand, autor de correspondencia), Amy Niang
Año2013
Volumen72
Número1
Páginas41-63
Fecha de publicación2013-04-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAfrican Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0002-0184 • E-ISSN: 1469-2872
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00020184.2013.776197
OpenAlexW2039796406
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas3
Referencias citadas21

The weekly market of Diaobé, one of the largest international market-towns in West Africa, is a place of convergence for sellers and buyers from Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone and Mali. At the same time that they trade, negotiate and exchange agricultural products and manufactured commodities, people renegotiate the terms of regional integration in creative, albeit informal ways. In the absence of formal channels of regulation of local centres of exchange, places like Diaobé point to a form of de facto integration that operates within and outside the institutional and legal frameworks of existing treaties and conventions. This article examines the ways cross-border flows and mobility challenge institutional modes of integration through simultaneously dis-integrative and complementary processes. The example of Diaobé allows exploring the socio-cultural dynamics, unstructured trading patterns, as well as the ways in which private operators effectively regulate the terms of market and integration; the issue of the eroding influence of state authority on its periphery is thus acutely raised

Agriculture · Business · Convergence (economics · De facto · Development economics · Economic geography · Economic growth · Economics · Geography · International trade · Laissez-faire · Market access · Market economy · Market integration · Negotiable instrument · Negotiation · Political science · Regional Integration · Sierra leone · State (computer science · African Studies and Ethnography · China's Global Influence and Migration · French Urban and Social Studies · Law