Paper short abstract:

This paper concerns a comparative analysis between 'looters' in Mali and street vendors of tourist art and counterfeit brands in Rome in relation to the social organization of the trade chain, the spheres of value imbricated into exchange dynamics and economic autonomy/dependence relationships.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I propose a comparative perspective on the 'communicating-vessels-system' frame in relation to two shadow trade networks: rural diggers of ancient sites in Southern Mali and street vendors of tourist art and counterfeited brands in Rome. Farmers-diggers of the Baniko region represent the first link of the illegal trade of Malian antiquities (terracotta statuettes and bronzes). The social organization of these networks underlies hierarchical relationships based on economic dependence of diggers from local middlemen and urban antiquaries as well as a compartmentalized division of labour nourished by urban merchants. In a specular manner Senegalese street vendors in Rome are actors 'from the ground' of the international circulation of tourist art and 'fakes'. Nevertheless, in most of cases, they seem having room to manoeuvre because of a large choice of wholesalers, suppliers and little 'bosses' assuring the fragmentation of the sources of information (and consequently of power), and a diversified range of clients (shop keepers, weekly petty traders, peers, individual customers, etc). My aim is to demonstrate that the 'communicating-vessels-system' ruling these networks is all the more rigid since the nature of 'illegal' items is based on a monopolized management of knowledge and information on the whole chain. In particular I explore degrees of hierarchy in the links of these trade chains showing that hierarchy is directly proportional to the size of 'strong' and 'weak' links of the chain, to degrees of economic dependence in trust relationships, and to stylistic constraints.