Comments on “The Lebanese in West Africa”

Throughout the history of economics the stranger everywhere appears as the trader, or the trader as stranger. As long as the economy is essentially selfsufficient, or products are exchanged within a spatially narrow group, it needs no middleman: a trader is required only for products that originate outside the group. Insofar as members do not leave the circle to buy these necessities — in which case they are the “strange” merchants in that outside territory — the trader must be a stranger … This position of the stranger stands out more sharply if he settles down in the place of his activity, instead of leaving it again: in innumerable cases even this is possible only if he can live by intermediate trade… This position of the stranger stands out more sharply if he settles down in the place of his activity, instead of leaving it again: in innumerable cases even this is possible only if he can live by intermediate trade… The stranger is by nature no “owner of the soil“ — soil not only in the physical but also in the figurative sense of a life-substance which is fixed, if not in a point in space, at least at an ideal point of the social environment. Although in more intimate relations he may develop all kinds of charm and significance, as long as he is considered a stranger in the eyes of the other, he is not an “owner of soil”… Another expression of this constellation lies in the objectivity of the stranger. He is not radically committed to the unique ingredients and peculiar tendencies of the group, and therefore approaches them with the specific attitude of “objectivity”. But objectivity does not imply passivity and detachment; it is a particular structure composed of distance and nearness, indifference and involvement … The freedom, however, which allows the stranger to experience and treat even his close relationships as though from a birds-eye view, contains many dangerous possibilities. In uprisings of all sorts, the party attacked has claimed, from the beginning of things, that provocation has come from the outside, from emissaries and instigators.