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

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. Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2006.