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

Abstract

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.