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

Abstract

Analyses of the flow of trade are based on three traditional trends, each of which focuses on one component of movement: commodity, infrastructures and actors. Based on these three models’ limitations and the use of qualitative economic geography and ethnography, this paper enriches our understanding of the flows of cross‐border trade, crossing of bodies of literature and theories. It offers a description of commercial traffic in the Central African Copperbelt and calls for a better comprehension of the specific conditions for executing commercial movements, where infrastructures, commodities and actors influence each other to allow the movement of things.