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Hierarchies of Trade Yiwu and Dushanbe 30 7 2018.pdf (618.27 kB)

Hierarchies of trade in Yiwu and Dushanbe: the case of an Uzbek merchant family from Tajikistan

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posted on 2023-06-09, 14:18 authored by Diana Ibanez-TiradoDiana Ibanez-Tirado
This article focuses on the trading trajectory of an Uzbek family of merchants from Tajikistan. This family runs businesses in both Tajikistan’s capital, Dushanbe, and China’s famous international trading city: Yiwu. The analysis is centred on the accounts placed by Tajikistan’s Uzbek merchants about their historically sustained experience, often across several generations, in trading activities. These merchants’ claims of belonging to a ‘historical’ trading community rather than being ‘newcomers’ to long-distance commerce are articulated in relation to notions of ‘hierarchies of trade’ as they evolve in a twofold relational model linking Yiwu’s Changchun neighbourhood and Dushanbe. I suggest that the forms of conviviality enacted in Yiwu’s Changchun neighbourhood need to be understood in terms of the historical, multinational and transregional contacts that have occurred within the spaces of the former Soviet Union, as well as along the China-Russia and China-Central Asian borders. Equally, the hierarchies of trade of Uzbek merchants from Tajikistan in Yiwu’s Changchun neighbourhood cut-across markers of identity that juxtapose the roles of Tajik and Uzbek communities in Tajikistan’s contemporary politics and economics.

Funding

Trust, Global Traders and Cheap Commodities in a Chinese International City (TRODITIES); G1723; EUROPEAN UNION; 669132

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Accepted version

Journal

History and Anthropology

ISSN

0275-7206

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Issue

sup1

Volume

29

Page range

S31-S47

Department affiliated with

  • Anthropology Publications

Research groups affiliated with

  • Sussex Asia Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2018-07-31

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2020-02-06

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2018-07-30

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