Enriching the analysis of commercial movement: Convergence and the blurring of trade flows on a border in Southern Africa

Blaszkiewicz, Hélène

doi:10.1111/area.12542

Cited by 2 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 34 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This paper on the inconspicuous geography of retail trade is the result of extensive empirical research conducted between the Arab world, China and Sub-Saharan Africa between the years 2000 and 2020. We have tried to report here the main results, highlighting these little-known trading roads that link the spaces of production to the spaces of consumption, which include millions of poor people in the Global South, and the logistic chains between them (Blaszkiewicz, 2019). The Covid pandemic in 2020 marks an important turning point in this geography of retailing: on a global scale, it has shown that whereas human mobility has been limited, goods have continued to move, enriching even the large logistics groups and GAFA companies.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inconspicuous geography of retail trade: reaching the Global South consumers

Choplin,

Pliez

2024

belgeo

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

By analysing the inconspicuous geography of retail trade, this paper aims to reveal the largely unknown routes and people that play a crucial role in the globalised economy. For the last thirty years, transnational routes of exchange have connected the world’s workshop, mainly in China, with the so-called market of the poor.This paper is based on long-term fieldwork that attempts to investigate globalisation in the most “discrete” spaces of the global world. This other view of globalisation focuses, from a geographical perspective, on its less visible but essential forms in interstitial spaces. In order to understand these other “Silk Roads”, we propose to take and follow these thousand and one roads in order to analyse a globalisation from below and from the point of view of the different actors that underpin it.In the first section, we propose to map this “other” globalisation, examining geopolitical reconfigurations, the nature of the goods traded, the growing role of economic actors such as entrepreneurial migrants and diasporas, and the changing hierarchy of spaces, including rural centres and small towns. The links go beyond the North-South divide and reflect the growth of trade between the BRICs, including China, and regions of the world that have been marginalised in world trade. Secondly, we propose to look at the Mediterranean area, which has renewed its multiple networks and commercial hubs. In the last section, the analysis focuses on globalisation in West Africa, a region that for too long has been considered peripheral and “late” in its integration into the world (and thus despite centuries of slave trade). We demonstrate that discrete spaces serve as strategic places for the circulation and marketing of products that are massively consumed by millions of “poor” people.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inconspicuous geography of retail trade: reaching the Global South consumers

Choplin,

Pliez

2024

belgeo

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…As previously mentioned, the main theories developed to understand commercial movements produce a segmented picture of the flow of goods (Blaszkiewicz, 2019). Each of the currents described in more detail below has broken down commercial movements into smaller components in an effort to understand them.…”

Section: Analysing Trade Flows: Orderings and Hierarchies In Existing...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Based on findings from an 11-month field study conducted on the border between Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which specifically studied commercial traffic in this mineral-rich region of Southern Africa, this paper identifies the limits of existing trends of economic geography in the study of trade flows. Most geographic literature analysing commercial movements appears to be segmented (Blaszkiewicz, 2019). When studying the movement of things through space, the focus typically stays on a single component, such as studying trade from the perspective of the goods being moved (e.g., Cook, 2004), the actors who move commodities (e.g., Titeca, 2006), infrastructures and their political effects (e.g., Hönke & Cuesta-Fernandez, 2018), or different scales of movement (e.g., Dobler, 2016).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Using the flow regimes framework to de‐hierarchise the analysis of commercial movements: Case studies from the Central African Copperbelt

Blaszkiewicz

2021

Trans Inst British Geog

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Funding informationThis paper has benefited from a fieldwork scholarship from the Institut Français en Afrique du Sud (IFAS, Johannesburg) and from the help of Maison des sciences de l'Homme (MSH, Lyon) regarding its editing.Observing trade flows at a Southern African border reveals that different commodities move differently, raising the question of why some commodities stop when others flow, and why some flows move faster when others experience speed reductions and stoppages. This paper is concerned with presenting a theoretical frameworkthe flow regime frameworkto make sense of the uneven rhythms and manners of the flow of commodities. Building on a review of four economic geography trends (transport geography, logistics studies, thing-following studies, and scalar analysis) and of the orderings and dichotomies they create, I argue that we need a non-hierarchical way to understand the complexity and variability of trade flows and traders' strategies along different paces and rhythms. The flow regimes, defined as lasting socio-technical agencements of practices, actors, infrastructure uses, and ideologies, comprise the proposed theoretical solution to make sense of the variability of commodities' paces. This theoretical framework is illustrated empirically through the examples of the three flow regimes identified in the Central African Copperbelt, based on 11 months of ethnographic fieldwork: the off-road regime, characterised by modular and flexible rhythms; the spare-wheel regime, whose flows are subjected to state-induced accelerations and stoppages; and the power-steering regime, based on costly public and private technologies allowing for fast and fluid commercial movements. Without attempting to describe a particular scale of action, the concept of regimes makes it possible to analyse head-on activities that are usually studied separately (such as "small" border trade and flows driven by large logistics firms). I conclude by suggesting that the flow regimes framework allows to highlight how the globalisation of flows features irregularity and lumpiness.

show abstract

Enriching the analysis of commercial movement: Convergence and the blurring of trade flows on a border in Southern Africa

Cited by 2 publications

References 34 publications

Inconspicuous geography of retail trade: reaching the Global South consumers

Inconspicuous geography of retail trade: reaching the Global South consumers

Using the flow regimes framework to de‐hierarchise the analysis of commercial movements: Case studies from the Central African Copperbelt

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About