Extending networks and mediating brands: stallholder strategies in a Mauritian market

Abstract

We examine how increasingly volatile global flows and tenuous networks rearrange local spaces and are inhabited by local people by looking at the strategies adopted by stallholders on a Mauritian market who acquire and sell locally manufactured branded clothes. Continuously (re)negotiating their connections to power-holders within networks of clothing production, we highlight how these traders achieve momentarily stable arrangements within a context where their entrepreneurial strategies are constrained. Further, in exploring how traders distinguish their wares, we investigate how multiple meanings and values circulate around these branded clothes as global objects. © 2006 The Authors. Journ..