This article addresses the recent proliferation of small-scale trading in East Europe with a special emphasis on the profits and perils associated with border-crossing. The political, economic and symbolic aspects of state borders have changed significantly since 1989, and the economic opportunities associated with border-crossing as 'trader-tourists' represent one of the major challenges to varying categories of the populations to engage in activities associated with the capitalistic spirit of the new era. With ethnographic material from Varna on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast and some comparative glimpses of Russian street trading in Northern Norway, the article discusses how the border, in representing opportunities as well as risks, regulates the relationship between ethnic categories taking part in the trade as well as that between the controllers and the citizens. Copyright Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1999.
People caught in circumstances of social upheaval differ in the ways in which they adjust to instability and change. Occasionally individuals at less privileged socioeconomic levels engage in socially devalued practices such as the small‐scale trading enterprises that have been degraded ideologically during 45 years of communist rule in Bulgaria. In this article we explore the ways in which people adjust to change by examining ethnographically the practice of trader tourism in Bulgaria. We argue that such an examination supports a rethinking of the concept of boundaries, if boundaries are fluid sets of constraints that individuals negotiate when reacting to monumental stress. Specifically, we consider the reactions of population groups within Bulgaria to the post‐1989 economic crisis. We also suggest that members of each group react in group‐specific strategies of temporary inclusion, permanent inclusion, and exclusion, [economic anthropology, survival strategies, markets and trader tourism, capitalism con. communism, Roma/Indo‐Roma/Gypsies, Eastern Europe/Balkan/Bulgaria, transition/boundaries]
In coastal north Norway the Saami people have lived in a close relationship with Norwegians or Norse people for a thousand years or more. This relationship has been articulated in various ways over the centuries, and this article argues that in parts of the region it took a rather intimate form based on the shared exploitation of the dominant marine and terrestrial niches, a common class position as tenant farmers, a varying practice of inter-ethnic marital relations and the effects of a bilateral kinship system. Various forms of inter-ethnic contact and exchange may thus have served to reduce the relevance of ethnic difference in daily life, as suggested by Barth's argument about the integrative effect of transactions, but contrary to his argument about the transactional reinforcement of ethnic boundaries. Contrary to the intention, governmental assimilatory efforts served to reproduce the boundary as the basis for a ranked society and left coastal Saami individuals in some confusion as to how to define themselves, often opting for a mixed category of Norwegian and Saami, labelled ‘Northerner’. Ethno-political emancipation in recent years has tended to put pressure on this identity construction and promoted a dichotomised identity as either Saami or Norwegian.
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