Colloquium:
Exchange and Division of Labour

27.06.2003

Venue: Leipzig, Villa Tillmanns, Wächterstraße 30
Date: June 27th, 2003

Reception:
All participants of the workshop are cordially invited to the reception on June 26, 7.00 p.m., at the venue of the workshop, Villa Tillmans, Wächterstr. 30.

 

Programme

June 27th, 2003
Leipzig, Villa Tillmanns, Wächterstraße 30

9.00 a.m.

Introduction

9.15 a.m.

Florian Stammler, M.A., Halle:
The Commoditisation of Reindeer Herding in Post-Soviet Russia. Herders, Antlers and Traders in Yamal

10.15 a.m.

Dr. Maren Bellwinkel-Schempp, Heidelberg:
Globaler Handel und lokaler Vertrieb. Zum Borsten- und Bürstenhandel in Indien und Europa

11.15 - 11.30 a.m.

Coffee break

11.30 a.m.

Dr. Thomas Brüggemann, Jena:
Nundinae – (temporäre) Märkte als Bindeglied zwischen römischer Administration und indigenen Gesellschaften Nordafrikas

12.30 a.m. - 2.00 p.m.

Lunch

2.00 p.m.

PD Dr. Klaus Hesse, Berlin:
Die Mongolei und China. Spezialisierung, Arbeitsteilung, Politik und Formen des Austausches in historisch-ethnologischer Perspektive

3.00 p.m.

PD Dr. Ralph Kauz, München:
Der Pferdehandel der Ming-Dynastie mit ihren zentralasiatischen Nachbarn – seine quantitative Relation zum gesamten Pferdehandel dieser Dynastie

4.00 - 4.30 p.m.

Coffee break

4.30 p.m.

Dr. Lozanka Peycheva und Dr. Ventsislav Dimov, Sofia:
Market of Gypsy Musicians and Gipsy Music in Bulgaria

5.30 - 6.00 p.m.

Concluding discussion

7.00 p.m.

Dinner: Ratskeller

 


Abstracts

The Commoditisation of Reindeer Herding in Post Soviet Russia. Herders, Antlers and traders in Yamal

Florian Stammler

This contribution illustrates the process of economic integration of a remote arctic community into an international trading network.
Drawing on ethnography of the developing velvet reindeer antler business between Korean or Chinese customers, Russian traders and Nentsy reindeer herders, I start out to argue that market integration and commoditisation does not always have to be accompanied by a marginalisation of nomads or a change of social strata among them.
I show how the Nentsy could succeed to organise their engagement with new commodities after 1990 by influencing the conditions for business with outsiders. This is done by controlling access to the place of production, the reindeer pastures of the West Siberian Tundra. Access is gained only through cooperation with one of the vertically integrated reindeer production enterprises that were established by native local traders. They organise the production of the raw material, the cutting, packing, storing, shipping and drying of 'velvet' reindeer antlers, before they sell it to Russian traders, who again sell it to some more or less reliable customers from China or Korea. In exchange for this material, Nentsy traders receive hard currency income, which enables them to provide a whole range of new imported products to the tundra. This is how reindeer herders get access to items of the international consumption economy, such as Chinese tape recorders, American instant soups, ketchup, and Japanese snowmobiles.
I argue that in spite of the significant flow of commodities between the 'nomadic' and the 'sedentary' space, the borders between these two 'worlds' are still significant, and the reindeer herders still see their engagement with the commodity economy as supplementary to their production of meat for local markets. The split between two items of economic exchange - antlers and meat - even is mirrored by a split of expenditures. Income from meat and fur production is spent to satisfy the basic needs, whereas income from the antler business is used for "luxury" goods not necessary for survival. This finding links to recent anthropological works about the meaning of money as an item of generalised exchange versus 'special purpose money' (see Pine 2002, Parry & Bloch 1989). Although the antler business has a somewhat bad reputation because it is thought to be bad for the health of the animals, the income gained from it is not stigmatised as 'dirty money' among reindeer herders. However, since they know that this is a business which involves many adventure capitalists and Mafiosi, herders know that they should not rely on it too much.
The material from northwest Siberia allows us to understand the process of commoditisation in a nomadic community from the very beginning, since it started only in the 1990s. It provides fresh insights of how people in a seemingly remote community engage in global markets without sacrificing their distinguished culture based on nomadic herding of domestic reindeer. At the same time it is also an argument for the highly adaptive characteristics of a nomadic community. I suggest that the anthropologist should look at such cases with fewer presuppositions than earlier accounts on nomadic communities (see Gilles & Gefu 1990): Neither are they primitive (or noble) savages to be civilised nor are they 'eaten up' by the capitalist world system, nor are they a danger for the consolidation of a new nation state, here the Russian Federation. They are responding to transformations in the world around them by meeting the demands of a newly developed market, just as many other economic actors in the postsocialist period did with varying success.


Globaler Handel und lokaler Vertrieb. Zum Borsten- und Bürstenhandel in Indien und Europa

Maren Bellwinkel-Schempp

Brushes and bristles became a cherished commodity in the 1870 in Europe, which was due to a variety of factors which were connected with the change of fashion and clothing as well as with major political changes- notably the foundation of the Deutsches Reich and the Subsequent Emancipation of the German Jews. As a concomitant of the fur trade, Leipzig became the European Centre of the bristle trade, after St. Petersburg lost its eminence after the Bolshevik Revolution. Bristle Trade was predominantly in Jewish hands-although the cultural matrix of Judaism considered the pig to be an unclean animal. Commerce went one the one hand against cultural notions of purity and pollution and on the other hand reinforced them. As a side line of colonial trade relations, the British in India taught bristle dressing to untouchables, which made Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh become the all India centre of bristle manufacturing. Although brush manufacturing became an industrial concern- in Europe as well as in India, manufacturing and industrial production went side by side, both at the lowest scale of income and prestige. Trading and hawking was done through itinerant traders, who joined the large army of paupers, vagrants, hawkers, beggars, bards and gypsies who travelled through Europe during the uprooting years of the industrial revolution, subject to registration, police orders, and Christian work culture in poor houses. Itinerant merchants, they joined the ranks of nomads of the roads during the summer months. Present day marketing strategies for brushes fall back upon the romanticism of ethnicity and manufacturing traditions- whereas the vagrants have transformed themselves from "customers" to Berber-the main North African nomad tribe.


Nundinae
– (temporäre) Märkte als Bindeglied zwischen römischer Administration und indigenen Gesellschaften Nordafrikas

Thomas Brüggemann

There can be no doubt that the periodic market has been one of the central social institutions of the unurbanized rural regions of the Maghrib, at least from the beginnings of recorded history in North Africa until very recent, post-colonial times. The periodic meetings between the members of the various ethnic groupings have been one of the most fundamental and enduring aspects of Maghribi society. As a specific means of economic redistribution and integration, the ancient periodic market can be conceived as a distal point on a spectrum of marketing institutions that ends in the permanent market place at the centre of the Mediterranean town. But what specific type of redistribution does the periodic market represent, within which wider networks of distribution is it engaged, and what are the modes of integration between the two? Not only physical construction (the concrete sphere), but also vocabulary (the mental-verbal) separated the polar expressions of these marketing institutions. The periodic market, wether it evantually became embedded in an urban centre or remained in the open countryside, was a purely rural institution designated nundinae by the Romans. Its defining characteristics were the opposite of those of the urban market place: a crucial separation from urban centered institutions, a fully integrated, holistic structure that included diverse social functions, a freedom from formally imposed controls, a lack of permanency, and a predominance of non-formalist economic functions. The nundinae principally served the commodity exchange and communications needs of the countryside. As centres of communication, they were also places where issues of local leadership and repute were decided.
When the Romans came the North Africa as landowners and administrators in the decades and centuries after the final destruction of Carthage in 146 B.C., they applied their distinctive terminology to the various types of marketing institutions they encountered in Africa. Latin inscriptions attesting the existence of nundinae, as opposed to fora, macella and mercatus, have been found throughout the countryside of the Maghrib, and it is primarily from this body of evidence that you can deduce something of the importance and function of this institution within the Roman system. The Roman state adminstration encountered in North Africa a peculiar local institution that was the analogue to similar periodic markets known in Italy and throughout the Empire. In all regions surrounding the Mediterranean under the aegis of the Roman state, these market festivals, numbering in the thousends, presented the administartion with a common problem. Since they were the customary point of assembly for otherwise dispersed rural populations, they formed a central node in the communications network that unified peasants, villagers, and nomadic pastoralists. As such the market has often been considered a potentially subversive institution in the eyes of political authority, whether ancient or modern. But the sheer number and diversity of rural periodic markets meant that posed a particulary difficult problem of supervision and control; and yet the element of control was a necessary adjunct to the peaceful exploitation of the countryside. Ostensibly, the close supervision of markets enabled the authorities to establish set procedures for buying and selling. The laws on nundinae were also concerned with providing adequate protection for those travelling to and from the market place, and safety at the market site itself for the regular clientele. Both these measures were nominally instituted as part of an apparently benevolent concern for maintaining the freedom of the market. Nevertheless, the scarcely hidden implication of some of the legal texts is one of deep worry over the subversive potential of the market: the fear that the market might become more than just an innocent exchange of goods. The fear, it must be admitted, was often justified.


Die Mongolei und China. Spezialisierung, Arbeitsteilung, Politik und Formen des Austausches in historisch-ethnologischer Perspektive

Klaus Hesse

This contribution is concerned with exchange relations between Mongolia and China from the view-point of 'long-durée' and thus raising the question of continuity, structural repetition, pattern variability and slow change in basic principles of exchange and the relation between the polities of the nomadic pastoralists of Mongolia and agricultural nothern China.
The area as well as the relations between China and Mongolia are highly suitable for such an approach: the patterns of social, economic and political constitution and relations of the high degree of continuity. They have been established and formalized during the relations of the Chinese Han-Dynasty and the steppe empire(s) of the Hsiung-nu from the 3rd century B.C. to the 2nd cenury A.D. The sources for this period are only Chinese, expressing the Chinese outlook or point of view. They are not easy to interpret; yet, they are explicit. For the period of the 15th and 16th century A.D., an excellent and rich documentation of the exchange relations between the Mongols and the Ming Dynasty is available, allowing a much closer look at the content, the forms, as well as quantity and quality of the relations. Comparing these two time levels, a high structural continuity within the patterns and forms of exchange is given. Evidences from other eras support this view.
Basing my argument on Han material, special attention will be given to forms of exchange, viz. the tribute system, the border markets, and diplomacy, invloving either asymmetric or balanced movements of goods. These relations have their own intricacies and dynamics. They are at once ceremonial, economical, political, and they are shaped by Chinese ideology and policy making. From these and especially the Ming sources, the embeddedness of the exchange relations within the economic, political, diplomatic, ceremonial and military relations is clearly visible. There is a strong political nexus in the relations, and the political formation on the steppe and the internal conditions of polities of China and Mongolia are reflected in the exchange relations, their forms, policy, frequency and volume.
A number of theoretical models have been put forward in the study of these relations. The political conditions and military strength play an important role; however, conflict or the threat of war is not the 'prime mover' within the relations. They also should not be simply seen as 'nomadic exploitation' or 'blackmail of subsidies'. On the other hand, it may be even more misleading to consider the relations only in terms of market exchange, market-price formations etc. Yet they are not only administered trade in Polanyi's terms. Individual or private trade and interest was neither absent nor unimportant, and the notion of gift and ceremonial exchange is of principal importance. However, the explicit debate of theories is not the main issue here. The aim here is to show some of the principles of the intricacies of these relations and their structural continuity, and thereby trying to go beyond the established conventional theories.


Der Pferdehandel der Ming-Dynastie mit ihren zentralasiatischen Nachbarn – seine quantitative Relation zum gesamten Pferdehandel dieser Dynastie

Ralph Kauz

After the defeat of the Mongolian Yuan dynasty and the establishment of the Ming dynasty in 1368, one of the major problems for this new dynasty was the sufficant supply of horses which were of utmost military importance against the still existing threat of Mongolian attacks at the Northern frontiers. Besides, horses were demanded by the imperial guards and by the upper classes, officials and merchants as means of transport.
China could not itself satisfy this demand for horses. The main causes were lack of pasture and knowledge in breeding. Thus, the first Ming Emperors, especially Hongwu and Yongle, looked for ways to get the much-needed horses:
– Founding of the Pasturage Office (Yuanma si) and of the Imperial Stud Office (Taipu si) in order to strengthen the local breeding of horses.
– Dispatching of various embassies to stimulate Inner Asian countries to offer and trade horses. – Establishing of horse fairs near the frontiers.
It should be stressed that Ming China was not, as often assumed, a self-sufficient state; at least in the case of horses it depended on other economies. Like a magnet it attracted horses from all possible places. The main supplier was Korea, but horses were also imported from Tibet, the Riukiu Islands and many states around the Indian Ocean, though transport facilities did not allow large imports by sea. The horses brought by the Mongols belonged to the Mongolian races, while those of Central Asian states were due to her better qualitiy often highly estimated.
The aim of this paper is a quantitative analysis of the horse imports from Inner Asia (here defined as Central Asia and the Mongolian steppes) compared to the other imports of horses. However, a definite comparison is due to the sources impossible and inner Chinese transactions cannot be considered, but it should be possible to draw an approximate picture of the horse trade and commercial interactions with Inner Asian countries during the Ming dynasty.
This paper is mainly based on the Veritable Records of the Ming dynasty (Ming shilu) and on the Collected Statues of the Ming dynasty (Da Ming huidian) as well as on the previous studies of Henry Serruys and Morris Rossabi.


Market of Gypsy Musicians and Gipsy Music in Bulgaria

Lozanka Peycheva und Ventsislav Dimov

The word market is widely spread among the professional Gypsy musicians in Bulgaria. When they use it they may mean some different things. Most musicians associate the word market with the money they are paid for their performances (the Bulgarian word for bargain and the word for market are of the same origin and therefore sound close). There is, however, a specific for the community of professional Gypsy musicians term called musicians market. It is used to signify a certain situation of communication between musicians concerning professional questions (information about the musical exchange, about musical instruments, about meetings with people, arranging new engagements).
The present text is focusing on the market of Gypsy music and musicians in Bulgaria. The data used as a base is from field research among professional Gypsy musicians in the last ten years. The extracted information is also historically interpreted, in consideration with older pieces of information about the market of Gypsy music and musicians.
The topic of music and musicians market is a very important part of the Gypsy music functioning in Bulgaria. Going into it, there are some more essential parts of the Gypsy music functioning in Bulgaria to be mentioned. Some of them are the relations among the musicians in the guild and as well the relations between the musicians and the audience (most musicians usually perform in various settlements, offering their music as a commodity according to the local audience taste). Bargaining and taking parsa (an extra payment given to the musicians by a listener for performing a certain piece of music on his will) can be considered as a material expression of the value of the music performed by Gypsy musicians.