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ABSTRACT
Selling provides and arena in which notions of what could be considered ‘ethical’ come into correspondence. The putative meaning and order of the world outside the market seeps into the moment of sale, infused with ideas about religiosity, ethnicity, piety, masculinity and civic duty. This article analyses the moment of sale through the work of commission agents who sell to retailers on behalf of farmers in Sri Lanka's largest wholesale vegetable market. The commission agent is selling the livelihood of the farmers right in front of them and must mediate between buyer and seller in close proximity, maintaining effective social relations with both parties present. The article shows how existing social relations beyond the market are brought to bear on such a problematic moment of sale, but also, how the context of selling acts as a specific site of transmission and transposition. Through an ethnographic engagement with the act of selling, I demonstrate how traders stake out alternative forms of social interaction, reimagine their relationships, and take on ambiguous attitudes towards the ability to sell at all.
Acknowledgments
This paper, and this special issue, came to life through a workshop on global comparative perspectives of selling, titled ‘Anthropology for Sale’ organised by myself and Jamie Cross at the University of Edinburgh. An ‘Innovation Grant’ from the Global Development Academy and a ‘Special Project Grant’ from the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Edinburgh, helped to make this event a success. The research on which this article draws was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). For careful and critical readings of various drafts of this paper I would like to thank Siobhan Magee and Sandy Robertson. Harshana Rambukwella drew my attention to the Sinhala literature and film mentioned within. The Galapereras kindly helped tidy up the Sinhala transliteration. The article has been further improved by the generous comments of two anonymous peer reviewers.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. This article is based upon ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Sri Lanka between November 2010 and September 2012. The research involved participant observation, surveys, and recorded interviews with traders. The research was funded by The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
2. The importance of physical interaction in understanding a market place that requires moving bodies and moving with bodies, is consonant with Timothy Landry's remarks on physicality in his attempt to learn Haitan Vodou (Landry Citation2008). Whereby culture, is something that can be learnt through movement and action (Landry Citation2008: 53).
3. In a similar way Loїc Waquant talks of the experience of boxing being a ‘kinetic culture’, ‘intensely corporeal’, and a ‘universe in which the most essential is transmitted acquired, and deployed beneath language and consciousness’ (Wacquant Citation2004: xi); learning to move and carry oneself in the market place, and in particular during a moment of sale, was a skill that sits beneath the skin, difficult to describe.
4. In a similar vein, Çalişkan (Citation2010) states that, ‘Whether their [the researcher's] goal is to locate the rational individual or the embedded market or the embedded institution, they are certain to find a universalised understanding of a “society” and an “economy” (Çalişkan Citation2010: 05).
5. http://www.trade.gov.lk/web/ - accessed on 20.04.2014.
6. There is only one female vendor, she works with her husband and does not feature in the data presented here.
7. http://www.trade.gov.lk/web/ - accessed on 20.04.2014.
8. This is the most recent figure I can find but it is likely to be much higher than this now.
9. The term kaḍē is used as shorthand throughout Sri Lanka for any kind of shop, for ease in this paper, I will simply use the term, stall.
10. Occasionally porters will refer to themselves as nathāmi, but this and the term ‘coolie’, or in Sinhala’ kuli väda, which means wage labourer, held derogatory connotations. I will use the English word porter throughout.
11. The final price that something is sold for is referred to by economists as the ‘price prevailing’.
12. The English word ‘quality’ was commonly used by the traders, normally suffixed by the Sinhala word madi (not enough) to indicate that there is not enough quality.
13. For more on how price differentials can be exploited by certain operators within the market see (Heslop Citation2016).
14. See Jane Guyer’s (Citation2010) special issue, ‘Number as Inventive Frontier’ Anthropological Theory.
15. See Heslop (Citation2016).
16. In particular, any interaction with a government office or the police is done through a mediator, often a family connection who might work or know somebody that works in the required department.
17. Anuśāsaka can also be a godfather type figure as well.
18. Pricing potatoes imported from China and Pakistan works slightly differently in the market, as they have better knowledge of their supply. In this instance the buyer cannot wait for a glut as he may for tomatoes.
19. In Sinhala language film and literature Muslims are also portrayed as opportunistic and lecherous, see Maagam Soliya by Mohan Raj Madawala (Citation2012), Kurulu Hadawatha by Liyanage Amarakeethi (Citation2014) and Suddilage Kathawa by Simon Nawagattegama (Citation1978).
20. Mohamed Mauroof has argued the case for ‘three ‘ideal-types’ of Muslim trader: the gem trader, the urban entrepreneur and the village boutique keeper’ (Ismail Citation1995: 77).
21. A lakh is a unit in the South Asian measuring system equal to one hundred thousand.