Itinerant Traders Research Articles

Urban Crime in the Lagos Traffic: An Ethnography at the Crossroads of Multiple Codes of Ethics

ABSTRACT This article is an ethnographic investigation into hawking, pickpocketing, and other crimes perpetrated during traffic situations in contemporary Lagos. Scholarship on street hawking in Nigeria – Lagos in particular – has overlooked certain issues associated with street hawking within Lagos traffic and has failed to counter the everyday understanding that itinerant traders are major actors in the recurring crimes that occur in traffic hold-ups. Through immersive fieldwork and based on my personal experience as a street hawker, I challenge some of these beliefs that urban crimes such as pickpocketing and armed robbery during hold-ups are predominantly perpetrated by street hawkers. I argue that street hawkers are distinguishable from the real criminals, despite police discourse and common beliefs. The criminalization of hawkers in the public mind and in administrative practices is due to categorical stereotypes unfairly produced by the government about itinerant traders during the city's feared traffic hold-ups. I show how the unfair criminalization of itinerant traders has been used to justify curbing street hawking within the traffic in Lagos.

ANALYSIS OF TAXATION AND WELFARE OF ITINERANT PALM OIL MARKETERS IN AKWA IBOM STATE, NIGERIA

The study analyzed the taxation and welfare of palm oil marketers in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. Multistage sampling techniques were adopted to select 120 itinerant palm oil marketers for the study. Primary data obtained using structured questionnaires were analyzed using descriptive statistical tools, multiple regression model and mean per-capita household consumption expenditure. Results showed that palm oil marketers paid mostly sales tax with minimum and maximum amounts being N500 and N3000 respectively. The level of market participation (P<0.01), quantity of palm oil sold (P<0.01), and selling price of palm oil (P<0.05) were the determinants of the amount of tax paid by itinerant traders in the study area. The respondents' monthly expenditure on food and non-food items was N111,787.90. Imposing taxes on itinerant palm oil traders decreased their welfare. There is a negative relationship between taxation and welfare of itinerant palm oil marketers, the study recommended that policymakers consider tax incentives like reduction in the amount of tax that marketers are required to pay and exemptions to encourage palm oil marketers to participate in the market to enhance their welfare.

Making the most of scarce biological resources in the desert: Loptuq material culture in Eastern Turkestan around 1900

BackgroundMost fisher-gatherer communities we know of utilized a limited number of natural resources for their livelihood. The Turkic-speaking Loptuq (exonym Loplik, Loplyk) in the Lower Tarim River basin, Taklamakan desert, Eastern Turkestan (Xinjiang), were no exception. Their habitat, the Lop Nor marsh and lake area, was surrounded by desert and very poor in plant species; the Loptuq had to make the most of a handful of available biological resources for housing, furniture, clothing and fabric, fishnets and traps, tools and other equipment. The taxa used by the Loptuq were documented by foreign explorers at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, prior to the forced resettlement of the group in the 1950s and subsequent destruction of their language, lifestyle and culture.Methods and sourcesEthnobiology explores the relationship between humans and their environment, including the use of biological resources for different purposes. In several aspects, historical ethnobiology is more challenging; it studies this relationship in the past and therefore cannot verify results with informants. As the present study discusses an extinct culture on the basis of literary and material sources, we apply a method called source pluralism. This approach allows the inclusion and combination of a wide range of data and materials, even scraps of information from various sources, with the aim to understand phenomena which are sparsely mentioned in historical records.Travel reports by Swedish, British, German, American and Russian explorers together with linguistic data provide the most important sources for understanding Loptuq interaction with the environment and its biota. Especially the large number of toponyms and phytonyms recorded by the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin and materials from his expeditions, including voucher specimens kept in Stockholm in the herbarium of the Swedish Natural History Museum, and objects of material culture in the collections of the Ethnographical Museum, are crucial for our analysis about local knowledge among the Loptuq. Illustrations and photographs provide us with additional information.ResultsThe question of how the Loptuq managed to survive at the fringe of a desert, a marsh and a lake which changed its location, intrigued all foreign visitors to the Lop Nor. The Loptuq’s main livelihood was fishing, hunting and gathering, and their material culture provided by plants and other organic materials included their usage, consumption and trade. Only a handful of species formed the basis of the Loptuq material culture, but they had learned to use these specific plants for a variety of purposes. The most important of these were Lop hemp, Poacynum pictum (Schrenk) Baill., the riparian tree Euphrates poplar, Populus euphratica Olivier, and the aquatic common reed, Phragmites australis (Cav.) Trin. ex Steud. Several species of tamarisk were used for fuel and building fences. A few plants were also harvested for making foodstuffs such as snacks and potherbs. In addition, the Loptuq also used fur, bird skins, down, feathers, mammal bones and fish bones for their material needs. The habitat provided cultural ecological services such as motifs for their folklore, linguistic expressions and songs, and the Loptuq engaged in small-scale bartering of plant products and furs with itinerant traders, which ensured them with a supply of metal for making tools.ConclusionThis article discusses the now extinct Loptuq material culture as it existed more than a hundred years ago, and how the scarce biological resources of their desert and marsh habitat were utilized. Loptuq adaptation strategies to the environment and local knowledge, transmitted over generations, which contributed to their survival and subsistence, were closely connected with the use of biological resources.For this study, a comprehensive approach has been adopted for the complex relationships between human, biota and landscape. The Loptuq are today largely ignored or deleted from history for political reasons and are seldom, if at all, mentioned in modern sources about the Lop Nor area. Their experience and knowledge, however, could be useful today, in a period of rapid climate change, for others living in or at the fringe of expanding deserts.

Examining the Views and Opinions of Itinerary Traders on Adherence to COVID-19 Lockdown in Enugu State, Nigeria

The outbreak of COVID-19 caused human activities to be affected in one way or another. As a result, measures were put in place by various national governments to reduce the spread of the virus. This paper examines adherence to COVID-19 guidelines in Nigeria among itinerant traders, using a total of 40 eligible participants from selected local governments in Enugu state, Nigeria. The study adapted purposive sampling techniques to identify eligible participants; while in-depth interview was the method used for data collection. Among other findings, result shows that the control measures rolled out by government were seriously undermined. Nomadic traders, driven by economic gains, played covert role in the spread of the virus. This signalled a weak link in the efforts to curb the spread of the virus in Nigeria. The study contributes to a more exact diagnosis of the weak link in the efforts to contain the spread of the virus and how the quest for economic gains drove the abuse of COVID-19 mitigation protocols with its attendant health implications. It therefore recommends that government should strengthen the institutional capacity for detection and control, and provide the critical infrastructural facilities that will make for intensified surveillance in future epidemic or pandemic outbreak. Economic incentives and the effective monitoring of protocol enforcers saddled with the responsibility of enforcing government directives are also encouraged in order to curb compromise.

André Wink. The Making of the Indo-Islamic World, c. 700–1800 CE.

Among the polities and cultures of Islam, the realms east of Baghdad have received increasing attention since the publication of Marshall Hodgson’s monumental Venture of Islam (1975), which offered an unprecedented panorama of the histories of the three “great empires” of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals. Since then, historians have continuously reshaped the geographic frame of analysis beyond the boundaries of the contemporary national states in which the histories of these empires had heretofore been written, whether the “Balkans to Bengal” complex proposed by Shahab Ahmed or the “Persianate Cosmopolis” described by Richard Eaton. An inventive and exciting attempt in this vein is promised in the work under consideration, itself a distillation of the author’s monumental Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World (1990–), a five-volume history (three so far completed) of what the author has described as the Indo-Islamic world. The frame is not limited (as is conventional) to the Indian subcontinent but aims to integrate the diverse landscapes around the Bay of Bengal and maritime Southeast Asia. Wink argues that the region was recognized as integrally comprised of Indias of various numbers and designations by Hellenic, Arabic, and European geographers, and marked, before the advent of Islam c. 700 CE, by Hindu and Buddhist polities. It was defined by two great frontiers: one, an arid zone dominated by nomads from central to south-central Asia (present-day Afghanistan), and the other, more amorphous maritime frontier of the Indian Ocean. Dominated by these zones of fluidity and mobility lay the settled agrarian inland and island states of the region. The nomadic conquest of the subcontinent in the early second millennium and the seaborne expansion of itinerant traders led to the birth of postnomadic Islamic subcontinental polities and commercially oriented maritime Muslim kingdoms; both these great frontiers closed with the consolidation of colonial power in the region by the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Vagrancy in the Victorian Age: Representing the Wandering Poor in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture

Vagrancy in the Victorian Age: Representing the Wandering Poor in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture

Kosmopolitanisme Hukum Islam: Peredaran Kitab Minhāj al-ṭālibīn di Nusantara

Mahmood Kooria. 2022. Islamic law in Circulation: Shāfiʿī Texts across the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Mahmood Kooria’s Islamic Law in Circulation examines the development of postclassical Islamic law pertaining to Shafi’ism in the eastern Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. Using the nodal point of Minhāj al-ṭālibīn, authored by 13th-century Damascene jurist Yaḥyā bin Sharaf al-Nawawī, this book circumnavigates the major narratives of Shāfiʿī legal circulation over a millennium. Based on this Mamluk-era text, Kooria traces the formation of the legal oceanic community by elucidating its enormous intertextual and intellectual networks and ramifications. The main argument of Kooria’s book is that historical Shāfiʿīsm in the postclassical Islamic communities took place not by center-periphery coercion or state conquest, but through cross-cultural negotiations between scholars and itinerant traders in maritime milieux throughout Africa, Arabia, and Asia.

Sosialisasi Pemberdayaan Masyrakat Melalui Bimbingan Teknis Home Industry Pengelolaan Cengkeh Dan Pala Di Desa Takofi Kecamatan Moti

The 2022 PKM activities carried out by the Mechanical Engineering Study Program, Faculty of Engineering, Khairun University, were completed in Takofi Village, Pulau Moti District. Takofi Village is one of the villages located in Pulau Moti District, with the average population working as farmers and fishermen. One of the biggest fertilizer producers from this village is cloves and nutmeg. The clove and nutmeg home processing industry in this village can be said to be very minimal. The clove and nutmeg marketing process carried out by the people of Takofi Village is usually carried out individually by the farmers and then sold to Village collectors; there are also itinerant traders who come from door to door to buy dried cloves from clove farmers who want to sell their cloves to them and some are sold directly to Ternate. The dedication results show that partners easily understand and practice the training material. This is evident from their ability to make several processed clove and nutmeg products, such as making clove oil and processed nutmeg products into candied nutmeg as taught. Through this activity, partners can be motivated to become entrepreneurs by utilizing existing local potential. Thus, the existing natural resources can not only be used optimally but also can generate added value for the family economy.Keywords: Cloves, Nutmeg, Community Empowerment, Takofi Village.

Peddling and Politics: Russian Itinerant Traders in the Russo-Finnish Conflict, 1899–1900

Abstract This article explores the ways in which Russian itinerant traders in the Grand Duchy of Finland became involved in the Russo-Finnish political conflict that followed the issuing of the February Manifesto in 1899. Building on portrayals of the peddlers in Russian and Finnish newspapers and political pamphlets, including the underground press that emerged in the late summer of 1900, it traces the creation of an enemy image of mobile Russians, the role that the Finnish Constitutionalists’ strategy of passive resistance ascribed to the “peddling question,” and the reactions to this strategy in Russian nationalist circles. The analysis contributes new knowledge on the position of Russian peddlers in Finland and on the use of political propaganda in the Russo-Finnish conflict, and more generally on the mechanisms through which mobile groups of people can become utilized as political tools in times of political tension. The article also shows that the Russian peddlers did not remain passive in the conflict but exploited the turmoil by filing petitions with the Governor General's Office that aimed at strengthening their legal position in the grand duchy.

Assessment of risk factors of food safety in local butter marketing in Kersa, Mana and Welmera districts of Oromia, Ethiopia

Risk factors pre-disposing local butter to food safety hazards in the informal marketing system along the supply chain of the central highlands and south-west midlands of Ethiopia were assessed. Purposive random sampling technique was used to select 1101 respondents from the local butter supply chain (532 producers, 107 retailers and 462 consumers). Data were collected using a semi-structured questionnaire developed separately for each category of respondents. Ninety- nine percent of the respondents indicated that butter was stored and marketed at ambient temperature with no cold chain management. Common butter storage materials included high-density polyethylene containers (51%), low-density polyethylene plastic bags (29%) and clay pots (73%). The respondents packed and marketed butter using castor leaves, plastic cups and false banana leaves and lints. Stream, river and borehole water sources were used to wash vessels, churners and fresh butter. However, only 23% of the respondents used tap water for the same purposes. The majority of the respondents trekked on their foot to take butter to local market places followed by the use of horse carts (11%) and three-wheel drives (10%). Itinerant traders and retailers played key roles in the informal supply chain of butter. Overall, there are no standard operating procedures and infrastructures along the supply chain. Thus, local butter supplied to consumers is liable to sensorial, physico-chemical and microbial deterioration and is exposed to risks of food-borne pathogens. The practices endanger the safety and quality of local butter unless stringent quality control measures are taken by concerned regulatory bodies. The objective of the study was to identify risk factors and design intervention to minimize the food safety hazards in butter. Key words: Food safety hazards, informal market, local butter, risk factors, supply chain

Itinerant traders: elusive subjects moving at the intersection of historical fields

ABSTRACT This special issue on itinerant trade includes new research on a range of non-fixed traders who engaged in both transnational and smaller-scale moves when trading. Itinerant trading stands at the crossroads of different historiographical fields: it can be studied through the lens of commercial and consumption history, but also as a history of migration and labour, or of the underbelly economy and deviance. More recently, this topic has interested historians of material culture, emotions and folklore. The contributions to this special issue highlight these new directions and important trends in research into itinerant trade. The five contributions explore moving traders in the early modern and modern periods in Britain, the Nordics and across the wider European continent. The articles investigate: the space, temporality and material culture of the saloop stall in early-modern London; female rural petty trading in early twentieth-century Finland; the British Liberal authorities' approach to regulating itinerant trade in late-modern Britain; the geographic, ethnic and cultural backgrounds and networks of itinerant traders in the late-nineteenth century Nordics; and the transnational networks of early-modern peddling in Europe.

A tool to help the honest poor: itinerant trading in great-Britain through the lens of late-Victorian legislation (1860–1900s)

ABSTRACT The last third of the nineteenth century was a turning point in terms of legislation surrounding itinerant trading in Britain. Liberal governments sought to adapt to what they perceived as the decline of peddling and encourage its transformation into a makeshift activity for humble labourers. This shift took place during the chancellorship and primeministership of William Gladstone. It reflected the popularity of self-help and the desire to improve the lot of the labouring poor in the late-nineteenth century. Encouraging peddling appeared to be an adequate tool to help poor labourers and subsidise working-class consumers, as itinerant traders supplied them with cheap goods. The period was thus marked by debates about the relevance of taxing hawkers: the Pedlars Act 1871 and Hawkers Act 1888 lowered the price of their certificates. Reformers and police constables, however, were also concerned by the ‘decline’ of peddling. They advocated for stricter control of the sellers, often likened pedlars to vagrants, and their salesmanship. The ‘self-help’ objective of the national legislation was furthermore debated and contested by local authorities, to which more powers were devolved in the late-nineteenth century. In some municipalities, it was mitigated by legislation related to urban planning, street cleanliness or shopkeepers’ interests.

Women as mobile vendors: petty trade and rural poverty in early twentieth-century Finland

ABSTRACT By focusing on poor rural women, this paper offers an exploration of the practices of itinerant trading during an era marked by modernisation and proletarisation. There are few sources regarding small-scale trading practiced on the margins of society, informally or on the fringe of legality. There is also a very limited amount of archival material, such as fiscal and legal sources, concerning these small-scale, informal forms of exchange. In this paper, I examine ethnographic material collected in the 1960s, when the Finnish Heritage Agency circulated questionnaires to collect information about traditional forms of trade among country folk. Such questionnaires were sent to a panel of respondents who regularly participated in enquiries on diverse themes. In their responses to questions on the subject ‘travels for trade’, persons with a rural background depicted customary and local practices of trading. How are female itinerant traders depicted?.

African Pentecostalism in India: Being Born Again in the Diaspora


 
 
 Over the past four decades, since the 1960s, there has been a steady flow of Africans moving to India for short-term activities: education, medical treatment and trade. There is a visible African diaspora in many localities in India. This diaspora is a layered one, consisting of diverse groups of people with different degrees of attachment to India: Africans settled in India with kinship ties, mobile professionals and students, and itinerant traders. Its composition and strength are in a constant flux. This paper will explore how debates and rituals in primarily Pentecostal- Charismatic churches – which have emerged as the focal point of community interaction for contemporary Africans in India – become crucial in shaping, reconfiguring and showcasing the markers of an imagined Africanness. Complex Pan-African diasporic subjectivities are invented, performed, and transmitted (from older residents to new arrivals), in conversation with prejudices and expectations of the host culture. These subjectivities are informed by educational and economic aspirations; visions of moral, personal, and corporate African progress, embedded in memoryscapes of an (Afro) future, articulated through the meta-language of African Pentecostalism.
 
 

INCREASING THE CAPACITY OF KOPASTI AS A CLEAN WATER MANAGEMENT FROM SOURCES IN PASIRJATI, UJUNGBERUNG DISTRICT, BANDUNG CITY

The clean water crisis began to emerge recently in the city of Bandung, especially when the water supply did not meet the needs of the residents, resulting in turmoil. Not only users and the government, but also PDAM as a provider are in trouble. Itinerant traders are also experiencing difficulties because demand continues to soar, while water sources are limited. According to Geodesy Expert from the Bandung Institute of Technology, Heri Andreas, Bandung is already experiencing a clean water crisis and currently the condition is getting worse. Without the intervention of the Government and Regional Governments in managing access to clean water, it is certain that the fate of big cities will have the potential for social conflict due to access to clean water.Springs as one of the shared water sources require management that includes mutual understanding and rules, service management and continuous maintenance. Increasing the Capacity of Kopasti to Manage Clean Water from Springs in Pasirjati Village, Ujungberung District, Bandung City through socialization, training and facilitation is expected to provide solutions faced by partners, especially with regard to opening a common understanding of the need for conservation efforts, protection of springs and management of archive administration and facilitation of work facilities.

MARKETING OF INLAND FISH IN ANAND, GUJARAT

Anand is number one district of Gujrat in inland fishery production through ponds and tanks. In the particular district, rohu, catla, nagri, surimai and bighead are abundantly found and large number of middlemen come between producer and consumer that increases marketing cost and margin. In this juncture, marketing efficiency, price spread and farmers' share in consumer rupee were decided for study purpose. This study was undertaken in the month of April-May, 2015 in eight taluka of Anand district purposively through a pre structured schedule. Rohu was observed as efficiently marketed than other categories of fish. It also generated larger share in consumer rupee for the producer and it was the only category of fish that was marketed in all the identified channels of the region. Marketing efficiency was better for larger fish and poor for the smaller ones. In all the channel the farmers' share in consumer rupee for bighead fish was constant but for Nagri it was very poor. Itinerant traders were earning maximum profit in marketing of Bighead fish. As the overall study area was completely unorganised, cooperatives and SHG may improve the marketing efficiency of the particular region. Key Words: Marketing efficiency, price spread, farmers' share in consumer rupee, inland fish

The COVID-19 Pandemic: Analysis of Large-Scale Social Restrictions (PSBB) Policies for the Community in Various Prevention Efforts

This study aims to determine the analysis of large-scale social restrictions (PSBB) policies for the community in various efforts to prevent the impact of Coronavirus disease transmission or known COVID-19. The wider the range of transmission of the COVID-19 pandemic, including in Indonesia, the government has taken decisions or steps to immediately break the chain of transmission of the COVID-19 pandemic by making policies, one of which is the large-scale social restriction (PSBB) policy. Government policy N0. 21 of 2020 concerning large-scale social restrictions in the context of accelerating the handling of the COVID-19. The research method is qualitative research with an empirical literature approach. This study uses the library method, namely browsing documents, reports such as journals, post office, books, articles, mass media, or news. The results of this study analyze government policies regarding large-scale social restrictions (PSBB) which have a major impact on people's lives, especially the difficulty of the economy to meet the needs of daily life, especially the lower middle class. PSBB direct impact is devastating for the people who rely on daily income, such as itinerant traders, hawkers, motorcycle taxi operators, drivers and public transportation has. This is one of the impacts of the enactment of the large-scale social restriction (PSBB) policy in Indonesia. From the results of the researchers, it can be concluded that the impact of the virus COVID-19 has resulted in an economic crisis, Learning activities previously carried out in schools today so learn at home online, difficulty to access basic health services, the implementation of the work patterns works from home.

Ibadan market women and Lebanese traders in Southwest Nigeria, 1900–1960

ABSTRACT In the pre-colonial era, Yoruba market women were astute itinerant traders with a formidable presence in the trading spaces of towns and villages. This legacy subsists till the twentieth century when colonialism shaped the business terrain. Colonial commercial changes such as the cluster of business districts in Ibadan around Dugbe, Ogunpa and Old Gbagi market were strengthened by the railway facility in the environs which ultimately aided the inflow of imported goods and textiles inclusive. Thus, this work examines the politics of textile trade between market women and the Lebanese merchants involved. The work contextualises the features of rivalry and discontent in the trade relations. It exposes market women’s cultural disposition to the market as a means of economic power cherished as a source of livelihood in the colonial era. The work deployed the historical approach to analyse primary and secondary sources such as books, journals and archival materials.

To the Problem of Greek Loanwords in the Ukrainian Argots

The article considers Greek borrowings in the Ukrainian lyric-craft argots in the context of the genesis and development of the East Slavic „secret languages”. The main linguistic views on the problem of Greek borrowings in the Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian historical sociolects expressed during the XIX–XXI centuries are analyzed, a number of critical remarks on some approaches to the problem are offered. Particular attention is paid to the critique of V. Bondaletov’s „Proto-Ofenian theory”, in particular to the statement of the exceptional influence of the sociolect of Russian itinerant traders as „praargot” on other East Slavic sociolects. The views of ethnographers and linguists on the extra-linguistic reasons for the formation of a common fund of Greek borrowings in the East Slavic „secret languages” are systematized and commented on. Numerous Greek borrowings in the Ukrainian lyric-craft argots have been studied on the background of other East Slavic sociolects: the study is based on a comparative method aimed at establishing substandard lexical units the most similar to the Greek etymon in the internal and external forms. This enabled to conclude to which specific sociolect or sociolect group the analyzed argots belong, as well as how they spread further among other sociolects, undergoing various phonetic, derivational and semantic transformations. The method mentioned above implemented on the basis of Greek borrowings in the domestic substandard systems enabled to emphasize the author’s views on the genesis of the Ukrainian lyric-craft argots, in particular, more clearly revealed the common Belarusian-Ukrainian argotic array and transitional „contact” sociolects, borrowing a great number of lexical units from it.

Food safety knowledge and practices among fresh coconut vendors

The study examines the distribution and sale practices of coconut vendors, identifies and analyzes food safety bottlenecks associated with street vending of fresh coconuts in Accra, Ghana. A cluster random sampling technique was used in which the study area was classified into three zones. One hundred fresh coconut vendors responded to a structured questionnaire. The results showed that vendors were predominantly male, most of who were educated up to secondary school level. Many (70.8%) of them learnt the trade through apprenticeship. The vendors were either stationed at a particular location (46.1%), or moved around as itinerant traders (53.8%), with their product displayed on pushcarts or head pans. The respondents revealed that more than 30% of consumers patronize fresh coconut because of its water. Food safety challenges identified in the coconut business include potential cross contamination of packaging materials by fresh coconuts, dipping pared coconut into alum solution to preserve freshness, and improper waste handling during and after sales. Education had a positive influence on food safety knowledge among the fresh coconut vendors (χ2 = 12.8, p < 0.05). Generally, vendors’ knowledge in food safety was encouraging but there ought to be an improvement in these areas of their operations to safeguard the health of consumers.