a New College, Women and Gender Studies Institute, University of Toronto , Toronto , Canada.
Cult Health Sex. 2013;15 Suppl 4:S467-81. doi: 10.1080/13691058.2013.793404. Epub 2013 May 24.
Characteristics associated with West African women traders often hinge on their resilience, ingenuity and savvy business practices under precarious economic conditions and changing ecologies. Moreover, traders are defined, identified and classified by their trade and the commodities associated with their trading practice. However, a social analysis and ethnography of trading practices challenges this taxonomy and suggests the relational and social embeddedness of such economic transactions and the unexpected intersecting roles traders perform as confidants, advisers and healers. This paper examines the multiple roles that Senegalese traders embody and perform and the vast repertoire of knowledge and cultural registers they employ as advisers on sexuality, matrimonial affairs and conjugality. It posits to reframe trade and the marketplace, not only as a fulcrum of economic transaction, but also as locus of affective interactions, performative-counselling practices and fluid space where traders impart knowledge to their female clientele on a wide spectrum of issues such as sexuality, conjugality and the aesthetics of intimacy. Lastly, it seeks to unveil new analytics and theorising on the evolving, embodied and performative roles of women traders and market women, while proving contextual and culturally-textured insights on 'counselling' and its interpretation in Senegal.
与西非女性商人相关的特征往往取决于她们在不稳定的经济条件和不断变化的生态环境下的韧性、创造力和精明的商业实践。此外，贸易商是根据他们的贸易和与贸易实践相关的商品来定义、识别和分类的。然而，对贸易实践的社会分析和民族志学挑战了这种分类法，并表明了这种经济交易的关系性和社会嵌入性，以及贸易商作为知己、顾问和治疗师所扮演的意外交叉角色。本文考察了塞内加尔贸易商所体现和扮演的多重角色，以及他们作为性、婚姻事务和婚姻关系顾问所运用的大量知识和文化记录。它主张重新构建贸易和市场，不仅将其作为经济交易的支点，而且将其作为情感互动、表现性咨询实践和流动性空间的场所，在这个场所中，贸易商向他们的女性客户传授性、婚姻和亲密关系美学等广泛问题的知识。最后，它试图揭示关于女性贸易商和市场女性不断发展、体现和表现角色的新分析和理论，同时证明了塞内加尔关于“咨询”及其解释的语境和文化背景的观点。
