Conclusions: Dealing with Difference

Abstract

The chapter discusses how both trading encounters and commodities were charged with meaning, and intimately connected to gendered, ethnicized, and classed practices. Focusing on trading practices in Northern Europe, the editors of the collection point to power relations that shaped the shifting boundaries between inclusion and exclusion of social groups and individuals. The livelihoods of petty traders were affected by how they were viewed as members of, often ethnicized or otherwise, subordinate groups. Meanwhile, culturally significant commodities could be empowering, allowing for a more respectable status for traders.