Money Has No Smell

by Stoller, Paul

• ISBN13: 9780226775302
• ISBN10: 0226775305
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-04-15
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

In February 1999 the tragic New York City police shooting of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed street vendor from Guinea, brought into focus the existence of West African merchants in urban America. In Money Has No Smell, Paul Stoller offers us a more complete portrait of the complex lives of West African immigrants like Diallo, a portrait based on years of research Stoller conducted on the streets of New York City during the 1990s. Blending fascinating ethnographic description with incisive social analysis, Stoller shows how these savvy West African entrepreneurs have built cohesive and effective multinational trading networks, in part through selling a simulated Africa to African Americans. These and other networks set up by the traders, along with their faith as devout Muslims, help them cope with the formidable state regulations and personal challenges they face in America. As Stoller demonstrates, the stories of these West African traders illustrate and illuminate ongoing debates about globalization, the informal economy, and the changing nature of American communities.

Author Biography

Paul Stoller is a professor of anthropology at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of a number of books, most recently Sensuous Scholarship and Jaguar: A Story of Africans in America, the latter published by the University of Chicago Press.

Table of Contents

Prologue Money Has No Smell	vii
A Slow Afternoon at the Harlem Market	1	(10)
Urban Intersections/Existential Crossroads	11	(17)
The Way of the Jaguar	28	(17)
African/Asian/Uptown/Downtown	45	(19)
Afrocentric Marketing	64	(24)
Regulating Urban Life	88	(33)
The Spatial Politics of African Trading in Harlem	121	(23)
City Life	144	(32)
Epilogue Issifi's Path	176	(7)
Notes	183	(24)
References	207	(12)
Index	219