Trade and Contemporary Society Along the Silk Road by Jacqueline Fewkes

Author:Jacqueline Fewkes [Fewkes, Jacqueline]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Commerce - India - Ladakh Region - History, Commerce, Ethnohistory - India - Ladakh Region, Ladakh Region (India) - History, Ladākh (India), Ladakhi (South Asian People) - Commerce, India, Ethnology, Ladåakh Region, Trade Routes - India - Ladakh Region - History, Ladakhi (South Asian People), Ladākh Region (India), Ladakh (India) - Economic Conditions, Ladakh Region (India), Ladakhi (South Asian People) - Economic Conditions, Ladakhi (South Asian People) - History, Ethnohistory, Ethnology - India - Ladakh Region, Ladakhi
ISBN: 9780415775557
Google: -l1L6jf4Dq8C
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2009-04-14T18:30:00+00:00

5 Living in a material world

Cosmopolitan elites

In this chapter I will argue that the Ladakhi Arghun community formed a cosmopolitan elite through interactions with commercial goods in the trading networks of Ladakh. The presence and use of trade goods shaped social relations through material connections to other commercial and cultural systems that were only available to a limited section of trade participants. This is particularly evident when we consider the role of material culture in the shape of three specific trading commodities - cotton piece goods, synthetic dyes, and charas.

A material world

Inanimate objects are not socially inert; identity can be intimately linked to particular commodities. For example, in the article “Ethnicity on the Hoof: On the Economics of Nuer Identity,” John Burton writes, “... the enigma ‘who are the Nuer’ could be partially resolved by answering the related question, ‘where are their cattle?’” (Burton 1981:161). While the Nuer example involves an animate commodity, the point remains; among the historical Nuer of Southern Sudan identity was intimately linked to particular objects that constructed social relations in the community. Burton also argues that understanding the role of commodities in identity formation of the Nuer challenges “static ethnic designations” that some anthropologists have traditionally relied upon, a view that obscures economic realities and falsely constructs the concept of a tribal community as an indisputable category (Burton 1981:157). Thus if we conceptualize community identity in relationship to commodities, we must consider identity to be as dynamic as the markets these commodities move within. If commodities are considered a part of community identity formation, then close attention to the processes by which relationships are constructed between commodities and systems of cultural meaning can help anthropologists understand culture from a dynamic perspective, rather than as a fixed entity.

These relationships can be manipulated by communities with political and social agendas. For example in the work of Suzanne Brenner the historical consumption of cheese in Indonesia was an act that for participants signified a relationship with “Dutch-ness,” an elite identity with the context of a colonial society (Brenner 1998). Trading groups, as explored in the work of Abner Cohen (Cohen 1974a), may utilize commodities as symbols to re-formulate traditional concepts of shared identity in new political and economic settings. Thus the task of studying material culture may seem to be one of examining how commodities in trade interact with traditional cultural symbols to re-articulate, re-define, or challenge social relations.

The role of the commodity in the cultural sphere, however, has further dynamic qualities. In Sweetness and Power Sidney Mintz has showed how trade of the commodity of sugar actively shaped political and economic relations between multiple cultural groups (Mintz 1987); a commodity that travels between regions creates a network of meanings between all those that come into contact with it, not only the producers and consumers. Similarly, Brian Spooner’s essay “Weavers and Dealers: The Authenticity of a Persian Carpet” (Spooner 1986) highlights how varied social relations can be linked to the economic sphere and objectified in an item in

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