Author Description

Product DescriptionTrading Worlds is an anthropological study of a little understood yet rapidly expanding global trading diaspora, namely the Afghan merchants of Afghanistan, Central Asia and Europe. It contests one-sided images that depict traders from this and other conflict regions as immoral profiteers, thecronies of warlords or international drug smugglers. It shows, rather, the active role these merchants play in an ever-more globalized political economy. Afghan merchants, the author demonstrates, forge and occupy critical economic niches, both at home and abroad: from the Persian Gulf to CentralAsia, to the ports of the Black Sea; and in global cities such as Istanbul, Moscow and London, the traders' activities are shaping the material and cultural lives of the diverse populations among whom they live.Through an exploration of the life histories, trading activities and everyday experiences of these mobile merchants, Magnus Marsden shows that traders' worlds are informed by complex forms of knowledge, skill, ethical sensibility, and long-lasting human relationships that often cut across anddissolve boundaries of nation, ethnicity, religion and ideology.Review"[Marsden] resents an innovative, complex, and persuasive 'bottom-up' analysis of the roles of Afghan merchants and traders in creating, transforming, and interconnecting markets and social networks in multiple Asian and European settings...Highly recommended."--CHOICEAbout the AuthorMagnus Marsden is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Sussex. He has spent fifteen years conducting research in both Afghanistan and Pakistan and, with Benjamin Hopkins, is the author ofFragments of the Afghan Frontier and editor ofBeyond Swat: History, Society and Economy Alongthe Afghanistan-Pakistan Frontier.