Paper short abstract:

In this paper I seek to contribute to debates on how we might conceptualise ‘global forms of civility’ through a consideration of ethnographic material concerning the ways in which transnational traders of Afghan background consider ‘being diplomatic’ to be an essential aspect of their daily activities.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I seek to contribute to debates on how we might conceptualise 'global forms of civility' through a consideration of ethnographic material concerning the ways in which transnational traders of Afghan background consider 'being diplomatic' to be an essential aspect of their daily activities. A consideration of such modes of 'being diplomatic' reveals how these traders' worlds are geared as much towards the navigation of international relations, boundaries, and divisions, as to any attempt to forge a space or network that transcends such divisions by creating shared registers of religion, culture, ethnicity, or political ideology. As diplomats, the traders' mobility and their internationally oriented subjectivities are connected to their work, career trajectories, and material lives: the skills of diplomacy ideally allow them to negotiate between multiple positions rather than to forge an overarching sense of unity, brotherhood, or collectivity. Afghan traders' internationalism is however not devoid of moral registers, debates, and anxieties, and reflective simply of these peoples' inherent pragmatism or strategizing. A mundane act of diplomacy, such as changing clothes at an international border, instead, provokes multiple questions for the traders concerning their loyalty to Afghanistan, the sincerity of the attempts to live a Muslim life, or commitment to a particular region. The paper assess the ways in which traders seek to mediate between such contrasting moral concerns, and documents, in the context of the complex and conflict-ridden worlds they inhabit, the limits of the forms of being diplomatic that they advocate.