Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T06:47:31.030Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Commerce and Community: Paths to Success for Malian Merchants*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Richard L. Warms
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

For many young Malian men, trade offers, or seems to offer, the possibility of escape from the poverty endemic to their society. Important traders are well dressed, well fed, have large families and entree to high circles of wealth and power (Amselle 1987a). Many believe that, through dint of hard work, savvy and a with little luck, anyone can become a successful trader.

While no one knows exactly how many attempt a career in commerce, Malian cities and towns teem with boys and men engaged in petty trade. Women are also involved in trade, though most deal only in small quantities of cooked food or garden produce. Men and boys sell pre-recorded cassettes, cigarettes, kola and other inexpensive merchandise. All believe that if they do the right things, and it is the will of God, they will succeed.

Success, for men, means progressively increasing the size of their business and eventually owning a large store, several trucks or another large enterprise. Women generally do not operate financially important businesses. However, they may have substantial behind-the-scenes investment in them.

For a Malian man, becoming a prosperous merchant can be seen as a process of joining a commercial community. The members of the commercial community control access to the wealth and the connections that can transform a poor shopkeeper into a wealthy merchant. Aspiring merchants must follow a course of action that allows them to identify increasingly with and be accepted by this community.

Type
Articles
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , September 1994 , pp. 97 - 120
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This work was supported by a grant from the Shell Foundation for International Research in Developing Areas. I am indebted to the reviewers at African Studies Review for their extremely helpful comments. Responsibility for the views expressed is, of course, mine alone

References

Amselle, Jean-Loup. 1977. “Les Negociants de la Savane: Historie et Organisation Sociale des Kooroko.” Paris: Editions Anthropos.Google Scholar
Amselle, Jean-Loup. 1985. “Le Wahabisme à Bamako (1945-1985).” Canadian Journal of African Studies 19:345–57.Google Scholar
Amselle, Jean-Loup. 1987a. “Fonctionnaires et Hommes d'Affaires au Mali.” Politique Africaine June:63–72.Google Scholar
Amselle, Jean-Loup. 1987b. “L'Ethnicité Comme Volonté et Comme Représentation: A Propos des Peul du Wasolon.” Annales ESC mars-avril 1987/2: 465–89.Google Scholar
Amselle, Jean-Loup. 1992. “La Corruption et le Clientélisme au Mali et en Europe de l'Est: Quelques Points de Comparaison.” Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines 32/4: 629–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Amselle, Jean-Loup and M'Bokolo, Elikia. 1985. Au Cour de l'Ethnie: Ethnies, Tribalisme, et Etat en Afrique. Paris: Editions La Decouverte.Google Scholar
Azarya, Victor. 1981. State Intervention in Economic Enterprise in Pre-colonial Africa: Massina and Samori's Stale. Los Angeles: UCLA African Studies Center.Google Scholar
Baier, Stephen. 1980. “Ecologically Based Trade and the State in Precolonial West Africa.” Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines 20/1-2:149–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bauer, Peter. 1963. West African Trade. 2nd edition. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Bazin, Jean. 1985. “A Chacun Son Bambara.” In An Cour de l'Ethnie: Ethnies, Tribalisme, et Etat en Afrique, edited by Amselle, Jean-Loup and M'Bokolo, Elikia, 87–128. Paris: Editions La Decouverte.Google Scholar
Beveridge, Andrew A. and Oberschall, Anthony R.. 1979. African Businessmen and Development in Zambia. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Bledsoe, Caroline. 1990. “No Success Without Struggle: Social Mobility and Hardship for Foster Children in Sierra Leone.” Man 25/1:70–88.Google Scholar
Burnham, Philip. 1980. Opportunity and Constraint in a Savanna Society: The Gbaya of Meiganga, Cameroon. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Clifford, James. 1988. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, A. P. 1985. The Symbolic Construction of Community. Chichester UK: Ellis Horwood.Google Scholar
Cohen, Abner. 1969. Custom and Politics in Urban Africa: A Study of Hausa Migrants in Youruba Towns. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Abner. 1971. “Cultural Strategies in the Organization of Trading Diasporas.” In The Development of Indigenous Trade and Markets in West Africa, edited by Meillassoux, Claude, 266–281. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Collieaux, M. 1924. “Contribution a l'Etude de l'Histoire de l'Ancien Royaume de Kénédougou (1825-1898).” Comité d'Etudes Historiques et Scientifiques de l'Afrique Occidental Francaise 9:128–81.Google Scholar
Dollimore, Jonathan. 1984. Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology, and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries. Chicago: University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Dorjahn, Vernon R. 1962. “African Traders in Central Sierra Leone,” In Markets in Africa, edited by Dalton, George and Bohannan, Paul, 61–88. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Gambetta, Diego. 1988. “Can We Trust Trust?” In Trust: Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations, edited by Gambetta, Diego, 213–37. New York: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Garlick, Peter. 1971. African Traders and Economic Development in Ghana. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Goerg, Odile. 1986. Commerce et Colonisation en Guinee 1985-1913. Paris: L'Harmattan.Google Scholar
Goody, Esther N. 1982. Parenthood and Social Reproduction: Fostering and Occupational Roles in West Africa. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Green, Kathryn L. 1986. “Dyula and Sonongui Roles in the Islamization of the Region of Kong.” In Rural and Urban Islam in West Africa, edited by Levtzion, N. and Fisher, H., 97–118. Boulder: Lynne Reinner.Google Scholar
Grégoire, Emmanuel. 1992. The Alhazai of Maradi: Traditional Hausa Merchants in a Changing Sahelian City, translated by Hardy, Benjamin H.. Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gugler, Joseph and Flanagan, William. 1978. Urbanization and Social Change in West Africa. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Handwerker, W. Perm. 1973. “Kinship, Friendship, and Business Failure Among MarketSellers in Monrovia, Liberia, 1970.” Africa 43:288–301 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hart, Keith. 1988. “Kinship, Contract, and Trust: The Economic Organization of Migrantsin an African City Slum.” In Trust: Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations, edited by Gambetta, Diego, 176–93. New York: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Holmes, Levell. 1977. “Tieba Traoré, Fama of Kénédougou: Two Decades of Political Development 1873-1893.” Ph.D. diss. University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Howard, J.E. 1986. “The New Historicism in Renaissance Studies. English Literary Renaissance 16/1:13–43 Google Scholar
Hunter, Guy. 1962. The New Societies of Tropical Africa. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Imperato, Pascal James. 1989. Mali: A Search for Direction. Boulder CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Isaac, Barry L. 1971. “Business Failure in a Developing Town: Pendembu, Sierra Leone.” Human Organization 30/3: 288–94.Google Scholar
Kaba, Lansine. 1974. The Wahhabiyya: Islamic Reform and Politics in French West Africa. Evanston IL: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Keita, Cheick Mahamadou Cherif. 1990. “Fadenya and Artistic Creation in Mali: Kelen Monson and Massa Makan Diabate.” Research in African Literatures 21/3:103–14.Google Scholar
Kondo, Dorinne. 1986. “Dissolution and Reconstitution of Self: Implications for Anthropological Epistemology.” Cultural Anthropology 1:74–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kondo, Dorinne. 1990. Crafting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labazée, Pascal. 1992. “Crise, Mobilité Professionnelle, Conversion Identitaire: L'Exampledu Commerce de l'Igname à Korhogo (Côte-d'lvoire).” Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines 32/4:455–68.Google Scholar
Launay, Robert. 1979. “Landlords, Hosts, and Strangers Among the Dyula.” Ethnology 18/1: 71–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Launay, Robert. 1982. Traders without Trade. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Launay, Robert. 1988. “Warriors and Traders: The Political Organization of a West African Chiefdom.” Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines. 28/3-4: 355–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levtzion, Nehemia. 1968. Muslims and Chiefs in West Africa: A Study of Islam in the Middle Volta Basin in the Pre-Colonial Period. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Levtzion, Nehemia. 1973. Ancient Ghana and Mali. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Levtzion, Nehemia. 1979. “Patterns of Islamization in West Africa.” In Conversion to Islam, edited by Levtzion, Nehemia, 207–16. New York: Holmes and Meier.Google Scholar
Lovejoy, Paul E. 1973. “The Kambarin Beriberi: The Formation of a Specialized Group of Hausa Kola Traders in the Nineteenth Century.” Journal of African History 14/4: 633–51.Google Scholar
Lovejoy, Paul E. and Baier, Stephen. 1975. “The Desert Side Economy of the Central Sudan.” International Journal of African Historical Studies 15:563–85.Google Scholar
McClelland, David C. 1961. The Achieving Society. Princeton NJ: D. Van Nostrand Co.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McClelland, David C. and Winter, David G.. 1969. Motivating Economic Achievement. New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Marris, Peter. 1968. “The Social Barriers to African Entrepreneurship.” Journal of Development Studies 5:29–38.Google Scholar
Meillassoux, Claude. 1971. “Introduction” (English version). In The Development of Indigenous Trade and Markets in West Africa, edited by Meillassoux, Claude, 49–86. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
N'Daiye, J. P. 1962. Enquête sur les Etudiants Noirs en France. Paris: Réalités Africaines.Google Scholar
Nafzinger, E. Wayne. 1970. “The Effect of the Nigerian Extended Family on Entrepreneurial Activity.” Economic Development and Culture Change 18:25–33.Google Scholar
Perinbam, Barbara. 1972. “Trade and Society in the Western Sahara and the Western Soudan: An Overview.” Bulletin de l'Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire 34 series B, 778–801.Google Scholar
Rosaldo, Renato. 1989. Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis. Boston MA: Beacon.Google Scholar
Salamone, Frank A. 1975. “Becoming Hausa: Ethnic Identity Change and Its Implications for the study of Ethnic Pluralism and Stratification.” Africa 45:410–24.Google Scholar
Salamone, Frank A.. 1992. “Playing at Nationalism: Nigeria, a Nation of ‘Ringers’.” Geneve Afrique 30/1:55–75.Google Scholar
Schatzberg, Michael G. 1972. The Coup and After: Continuity or Change in Malian Politics? Occasional Paper 5. Madison: University of Wisconsin African Studies Program.Google Scholar
Snyder, Francis G. 1967. “The Political Thought of Modibo Keita.” Journal of Modern African Studies 5:79–106.Google Scholar
Snyder, Frank Gregory. 1965. One Party Government in Mali: Transition Toward Control. New Haven CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Swindell, Kenneth. 1984. “Farmers, Traders, and Labourers: Dry Season Migration from North-West Nigeria, 1900-1933.” Africa 54/1: 3–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trager, Lillian. 1981. “Customers and Creditors: Variations in Economic Personalism in a Nigerian Marketing System.” Ethnology 20:133–46.Google Scholar
Warms, Richard L. 1987. “Continuity and Change in Patterns of Trade in Southern Mali.”Ph.D. diss. Syracuse University.Google Scholar
Warms, Richard L. 1989. “Commerce or Civil Service? Changes in Career Choice in Mali.”(paper presented at the annual meeting of the African Studies Association, Atlanta,GA., November 1989).Google Scholar
Warms, Richard L.. 1990. “Who are the Traders? Ethnic Identity and Trade in Southwestern Mali.” Ethnic Groups 8/1:57–72.Google Scholar
Warms, Richard L.. 1992. “Merchants, Muslims, Wahhåbiyya: The Elaboration of Islamic Identity in Sikasso, Mali.” Canadian Journal of African Studies. 26/3:485–507.Google Scholar
Wright, Donald R. 1977. “Darbo Jula: The Role of a Mandinka Jula Clan in the Long-Distance Trade of the Gambia River and its Hinterland.” African Economic History 3:33–45.Google Scholar