Brokers and Brokerage, Anthropology of

Lindquist, Johan

doi:10.1016/b978-0-08-097086-8.12178-6

Cited by 91 publications

(66 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Agents, mostly drawn from black township settings themselves, helped facilitate such sales. (Brokers more generally have often been 'drawn into new forms of translocal relations' (Lindquist 2015).) Cash-strapped consumers sometimes bought (and buy) more than they can afford, and are regularly sent reminders to repay outstanding debts, failing which their wages may be attached or their goods repossessed.…”

Section: Assembling Credit Scams In the Furniture Retail Tradementioning

confidence: 99%

“…'Mediating' or 'brokering' has ambivalent connotations (Lindquist 2015): it can be construed as positive (producing peaceful outcomes to difficult confrontations) or negative (suggesting operators who insert themselves between diverse parties so as to gain opportunistically). In classic studies of broker-style relationships, the latter valence has predominated.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In classic studies of broker-style relationships, the latter valence has predominated. Clients, it is argued, abandon their potentially open access to the state and/or major markets in order to gain the benefits of going through an intermediary (Eisenstadt & Roniger 1980;Randeraad 1998;James 2011;Lindquist 2015). In doing so, such clients are often unaware that a direct connection to, and trust in, state officials or businessmen might be possible; their recognition of such a possibility would likely put such intermediaries out of business (Gambetta 1988: 172).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Mediating Indebtedness in South Africa

James

2018

Ethnos

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When South Africa's credit/debt landscape expanded during the 1990s, this was justified by some as a new form of inclusion but alleged by others to have intensified the power and profit of capitalism and acted to the detriment of householders, thus perpetuating 'credit apartheid'. Yet, blame cannot be so easily assigned. Forces of state and market have intertwined to create a redistributive neoliberalism, enabling brokerswho have played a key role in establishing the current credit/debt landscapeto insert themselves into the interstices of the system, making money by adding interest at every point in the value chain. Apartheid's spatial separations meant that tradersand later informal moneylendersrelied on agents to bridge the gap between themselves and the rural/township world of economic informality. Even attempts at credit reform have been complicated, and stalled, by the ongoing presence of intermediaries. The paper explores these dynamics, illustrating how difficult it is to separate bad from good protagonists or perpetrators from victims.

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Section: Assembling Credit Scams In the Furniture Retail Tradementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Mediating Indebtedness in South Africa

James

2018

Ethnos

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“…Two concluding remarks emerge from the Kuppam case study. First, the Kuppam example aligns with Lindquist (2015) argument on how the intermediary lens helps making it possible to view institutions beyond the formal and informal binary instead focusing on the malleability of institutions. The intermediary as an analytical lens helps us understand the fluid dynamics between formal and informal institutions in an unsettled institutional setting like Kuppam.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 95%

Intermediary Politics in a Peri-Urban Village in Mangaluru, India

Kadfak

2018

Forum for Development Studies

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This article examines an unsettled institutional setting in a peri-urban coastal village of Mangaluru, India. This village is experiencing rapid economic, social and political changes. Urbanity has introduced formal institutions into this area as part of decentralization and state recognition to a dedicated economic development area. This peri-urban area, however, did not exist in an institutional void prior to formal recognition but under customary institutions. The newly introduced formal institutions therefore create an entangled and overlapping peri-urban governance setting. In order to understand the complex relationship between local governance bodies in swiftly urbanizing contexts, I use intermediary lens to view how institutions adapt to changing environments when becoming (formally) urban. The results show that instead of fixating performances according to mandates or laws, the formal and informal institutions both operate through intermediary performances to respond to residents' requirements and state provision of public services. To negotiate with the state, intermediaries use their skills to cultivate personal relations with local political parties, low-level bureaucrats and caste-base organizations, as well as to record vital information like demography and land relations. Furthermore, the intermediaries need to build reputation based on the perpetuation of successful representation, caste-based identity and political influence within the area. The intermediary lens illustrates a dynamic relationship between institutions influenced by current political issues and always emerging (re)alignments part of peri-urban political and economic transitions.

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“…Most generally, the broker is a human actor who gains something from the mediation of valued resources that he or she does not directly control, which can be distinguished from a patron, who controls valued resources, and a go‐between or a messenger, who does not affect the transaction. For a more general review of the anthropology of brokers and brokerage, see Lindquist ().…”

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confidence: 99%

Of figures and types: brokering knowledge and migration in Indonesia and beyond

Lindquist

2015

Royal Anthropological Inst

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This paper takes the broker as an entry-point for considering the problem of exemplification in anthropology. In particular, it approaches this problem by way of the relationship between figure and type, or between example and theoretical exemplar. While the figure is contingent on a specific socio-historical context, the type consciously accentuates particular characteristics in order to form the basis for comparison. More specifically, the paper approaches this relationship by considering the broker as type in relation to two specific figures in the current regime of transnational Indonesian migration, namely the NGO outreach worker and the informal labour recruiter, both identified as 'field agents', or petugas lapangan, in Indonesia. By way of juxtaposition the paper discusses the oscillation between figure and type in order to consider biases in the anthropological literature on brokers -most notably that the the broker is inherently amoral if not immoral -while suggesting that the broker is an exemplary methodological starting-point for contemporary anthropology.

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Brokers and Brokerage, Anthropology of

Cited by 91 publications

References 16 publications

Mediating Indebtedness in South Africa

Mediating Indebtedness in South Africa

Intermediary Politics in a Peri-Urban Village in Mangaluru, India

Of figures and types: brokering knowledge and migration in Indonesia and beyond

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