Economic circuits in Madagascar: “Agencing” the circulation of goods, accounts and money

Abstract

Recent economic sociology literature has focused on the circulation of goods along discontinuous economic spaces as a widespread modality of value creation. This paper explores how these “in-between” spaces are open to stabilized chains of transactions that maintain resilience against disruptions and uncertainties. It argues that the day-to-day circulation of actors, goods, and money in and between markets leads to an “economic circuit.” We define an economic circuit as a socio-technical and spatialized chain, which organizes on a regular and continuous basis the circulation of goods and payments between “kinship” partnerships. Exchanges are circular, assembling heterogeneous media and transfers, and relying on financial arrangements as a crucial mode for ensuring transaction continuity. To develop this idea, the paper draws upon the case of the small-scale fishing trading networks in Madagascar. It aims to explore the mundane arrangements and the “socio-technical agencements” operating across the whole chain of goods circulation.

Keywords:

• agencing
• economic circuit
• fish
• trading routes
• market
• Madagascar

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1.

An equilibrium of cooperation is achieved in an agencement when the co-functioning of associated components is seamless, particularly when agents have appropriately tuned their behaviour in the course of their interactions with the environmental elements and detected the limits beyond which either the behaviour of things and people becomes once more indeterminate or their abilities (bodily among others) and habits are stretched beyond their possibilities.

2. The fishermen working the Pangalan Canal, where we performed our observations, use homemade methods (canoes dug out of wood, handmade nets and creels), affording them only a limited catch from their immediate environment.

3. In 2011, the transportation costs on the Pangalan canal were as follows:

• for a basket: 7500 fmg (0.51 euro)

• for a full cool box: 50,000 fmg (3.44 euro)

• for an empty cool box: 25,000 fmg (1.72 euro)

• for a block of ice: 5000 fmg (0.34 euro). A cool box usually contains four blocks of ice

• for cash money: 5000 fmg for an amount not exceeding 500,000 fmg or 1000 fmg for an amount exceeding 500,000 fmg.

4. An approximate calculation of the cost/price per kilo for transporting the famous Malagasy shrimp between the Pangalan Canal and Tamatave gives the following result: the sale price per kilo is about 20,000 fmg (1.37 euro); a fisherman usually sends around five kilos and cool boxes can contain up to 40 kilos of freight (fish and ice). Depending on fish availability, the cost of transportation can be equal to at least 12.5% of the product value, reaching 25% on a bad day.

5. In this article, we use the term fishermen-gatherers to refer to the partners located upstream of the circuit (in coastal villages or rural areas) and gatherer-fishmongers to refer to those who sell on the urban markets.

6. As the counterpart of “kinship,” “techship” refers to the material and technical agencies that support the course of exchanges (the flows as well as the negotiations) along the economic circuit.

7. Insofar as the unit of reference is not limited to the family nucleus but encompasses a broader family circle, which sometimes even includes part of the village or its surroundings (“everybody is more or less a relative”).

8. Which we read with her.

9. Who could be more profitable for the carriers than cool boxes filled with fish (see note 6). Thus, negotiations focus less on prices than on the volumes transported in relation to the room available.

10. In this view, even if the reputation is based on regularly renewed exchanges, transactions are independent of each other.