Category Markets
From the Field: Persian New Year in Yiwu and Iranian Special Tea in Karachi
by Magnus Marsden One of my most memorable evenings while conducting fieldwork in Yiwu, China in 2016 fell on 20th March, the evening of Nowruz, Persian New Year. Having put my three-year-old son to bed and waited for my wife to return from her Chinese language classes it was often a part of my fieldwork […]
Creating a World Without Poverty?
By Hannah Feldman Sat on the floor of a small shared room on the outskirts of Metro Manila, Mae* and her sisters are hurriedly crafting necklaces, while their small children treat them as their personal jungle gym – climbing around their shoulders with giggles of glee. The only light comes from a crack in the […]
Enterprising Opportunities: Responsibilising Ghana’s Poor
by Tim Perkin Agbogbloshie is an area of Accra, Ghana’s capital, which has become a graveyard for global electronic waste (e-waste). In light of its structural adjustment after 1983, Ghana experienced a deregulation of trade and a sharp decrease in public sector jobs. As a corollary of this, an abundance of e-waste was dumped on […]
Invisible Government, Conjured Markets
by Bennett Heine Among political and social scientists in recent decades, the phrase ‘give a man a fish…’ has become more a prompt than a platitude, its pregnant ellipses raising questions about the provision and reception of social aid. Who’s giving the fish? How is it given? To whom is it given, and why? Are fish […]
