Lesley Braun: The Travail and Travels of Congolese Transnational Trader Women (Ambizione Project)

Wednesday Colloquium

While West African women maintain a long history of trading in the region and abroad, Central African women, specifically in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), have only recently embedded themselves in international trade circuits. Congo’s transnational trader women called femmes commerçantes, embark on international buying expeditions to purchase wholesale goods for local resale. Strengthened governmental relations between the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and China have contributed to the increased mobility between the two countries. Congo’s trader women are at the forefront of creating new social classes, as well as household structures.

This talk, based on a four-year project supported by a SNF Ambizione grant, examines the ways in which Congolese women navigate an economic landscape that is premised on social networks and transnational exchanges.

Dr. Lesley Braun is a Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Basel. Her book publication Congo’s Dancers: Women and Work in Kinshasa (forthcoming 2020) focuses on performance in Kinshasa, and the ways that popular dance, in its embodied and symbolic forms, participates in the construction of an urban experience.

Her current research investigates the gendered dimensions of transnational mobility, and how gender and sexuality impact, as well as shape women’s activities in the public sphere.

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