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CDY0010.1177/09213740211011202Cultural DynamicsBräuchler et al.

Introduction

Cultural Dynamics

Brokerage from within: A

2021, Vol. 33(4) 2 81­–1297
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DOI: 10.1177/09213740211011202
https://doi.org/10.1177/09213740211011202
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Birgit Bräuchler
Monash University Melbourne, Australia; University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Kathrin Knodel
Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany

Ute Röschenthaler
Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany

Abstract
Situated between various social worlds, brokers are highly mobile figures, in a physical and an
ideational sense; they channel scarce information and resources, translate different languages
and jargons, and mediate and facilitate between individuals and/or organisations, the local
and the global, in a wide range of settings. Taking an in-depth ethnographic look at the actual
work of brokers and their particular life stories, contributions to this special issue examine
brokers’ successes and failures, their vulnerabilities and limitations, (changing) interests
and motivations within the cultural contexts that these brokers are part of. By adopting a
comparative perspective in a thematic and a geographic sense, this special issue discusses the
role of brokerage in diverse settings such as the transnational world of trade and development,
peacebuilding and activism, refugee care and health care, government services and colonialism.
In preparing the ground for our individual contributions, this introductory article identifies
gaps in the existing brokerage literature and develops the conceptual framework for the
special issue.

Keywords
brokerage, broker chains, ethnography, hierarchies, life stories/biographies, limitations, moral
ambiguity, network

Corresponding author:
Birgit Bräuchler, Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen, Øster Farimagsgade 5,
Copenhagen 1353, Denmark.
Email: birgitbraeuchler@gmx.net
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Introduction
Brokers are fascinating but elusive figures, active in many different fields and taking
on many different forms. Situated between various social worlds, brokers are highly
mobile figures, in a physical and an ideational sense; they channel scarce information,
translate different languages and jargons, and mediate and facilitate between individu-
als and/or organisations, the local and the global, in a wide range of settings. Some
decades ago, Roger Southall (1978: 186) suggested that the lack of ethnographic stud-
ies on brokerage might result from an antipathy against middlemen as social parasites
and thus, in his case, were paid less attention than peasants and traders. Although
brokerage has attracted a lot of attention in recent years, comparative work on broker-
age is still lacking (Lindquist, 2015: 870) and only little is known about the actual
work and life worlds of brokers. Katherine Stovel and Lynette Shaw (2012: 139), for
example, acknowledge that brokerage has been studied in different subfields of sociol-
ogy, but is ‘hardly considered a central concept in the discipline’s theoretical or ana-
lytical arsenal’. In a similar vein, Thomas Faist (2014: 38) argued that brokerage is ‘an
essential yet understudied function in social life’. This lack of a thorough engagement
with the brokerage phenomenon is surprising, as the role of brokers as agents of social
change has been noted early on, for instance in the context of the consolidation of
nation states (Bailey, 1959: 101; Barth, 1966). Brokers are not simply facilitating the
relationship between two groups but actually constitute, mould and redefine this rela-
tionship (Paine, 1971: 21) and, in this process, redefine themselves. Hence, Marie
Perinbam (1973: 428–432) noted in the context of trade that ‘[i]f any group had the
power to innovate, it would have been brokers and their associates’. Thus, the broker
is an intriguing and significant figure to study.
Taking common themes from the brokerage literature, this special issue illustrates the
complexity of the work of brokers and how their brokerage is embedded in their daily
lives. By taking an in-depth ethnographic look at the actual work of brokers and their
particular life stories in diverse settings in African, Asian and European countries, our
contributions examine brokers’ socio-cultural practices of negotiation. They explore bro-
kers’ life stories, their successes and failures, their vulnerabilities, (changing) interests
and motivations within the cultural contexts that these brokers are part of. By adopting a
comparative perspective in a thematic and a geographic sense, the articles in this special
issue discuss the role of brokerage in diverse settings such as the transnational world of
trade (Röschenthaler) and development (Knodel), peacebuilding and activism
(Bräuchler), refugee care (Walther), health care (Arambewela-Colley), government ser-
vices (Epple), and colonialism (Márquez García).
In this introductory article, we develop the conceptual framework for the special issue
and prepare the ground for our individual contributions. The idea is not to impose precon-
ceived notions of the broker onto local realities and thus simplify the lived experiences of
brokers and parties they are mediating between. The contributions rather develop the spe-
cificities of the concept from their ethnographic material. We thus aim to broaden, but at the
same time further specify the concept of the broker. Taking into account a broker’s person-
hood, routines and relationships, we want to analyse brokerage from within through five
main themes: the emergence of new actors, technologies and spaces; brokers’ biographies,
Bräuchler et al. 2833

agency and self-description; moral ambiguity and vulnerabilities of brokerage; broker

chains and hierarchies; and brokerage as part-time or in/formal activity and as part of chang-
ing sets of overlapping tasks. This introductory article first discusses some of the meanings
of the term broker and then provides an overview of the anthropological and sociological
literature on brokerage and some common themes. It then identifies gaps in existing research
and integrates the contributions to this special issue into an innovative wider argument on
brokerage.

The ‘broker’ – some brief etymological reflections

We start by briefly looking at the etymology and semantic fields of some selected terms
related to brokerage.
The English ‘broker’, the German Makler and the French courtier all have roughly
the same meanings in the present but they are derived from different aspects of
mediation in trade. Etymologically, the term ‘broker’ goes back to Anglo-Norman
brokour or abrokour. Brokour is often said to be an old form of ‘broach’, that is, the
one piercing a small wine barrel to tap and sell the wine for profit, but it also refers
to any small trader or retailer, even someone dealing with the money of people. The
association of the term brokour with wine seems to come from Latin; in Latin it
relates to brocator or abrocarius, a wine dealer selling wine from the tap. However,
the Spanish albaroque has the same root but refers to a tip or small feast that was
given by traders to a middleperson who had helped in a deal. Interestingly, the term
albaroque, and hence also ‘broker’, have the same root as the Arabic buruk or
baraka, meaning a ‘blessing’, ‘gift’ or ‘gratuity’ and might refer to what has later on
been called the broker’s commission (see, for example, Merriam Webster, 2020;
Online Etymology Dictionary, 2017).
The French courtier and the German Makler have slightly different connotations. The
French courtier goes back to Occitan (a southern French dialect) for corratier or cour-
retier, meaning coureur, the person who runs commercial errands for another person
(Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, 1992), which points to the, often, tedious work of
brokers and their lower status. The German Makler comes from Dutch maken that was
introduced to High German in the seventeenth century with the meanings ‘to make’, ‘to
mediate (vermitteln) as a retailer and also to find faults in something (mäkeln) (Duden,
1963). In short, Makler refers to an ambiguous individual that mediates and can make
things happen, but who is also often viewed critically, which are attributes strongly con-
noted with the idea of brokers, as the case studies in this issue illustrate.

Scholarly engagement with the broker: an overview

This section provides a brief overview of scholarship on brokerage in anthropology and
related disciplines. Classically, brokerage has been discussed in several subfields of
anthropology and sociology, among them social network theories, economic anthropol-
ogy in the context of long-distance trade and political anthropology in the context of
development and social change. We also provide examples of studies that go beyond
those thematic fields.
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Social network theories in social anthropology and sociology

Georg Simmel’s sociological structural analysis was one of the first to focus on media-
tion processes in which a third actor translates and negotiates between two parties with-
out explicitly naming it brokerage. According to Simmel (1950: 145), ‘the appearance of
the third party indicates transition, conciliation, and abandonment of absolute contrast’.
Simmel put forward the concept of the triad whereby the third party can assume different
roles, as non-partisan arbitrators holding groups together, the tertius gaudens who medi-
ate between two parties for their own benefit, and those who broker to divide and rule.
Drawing on Simmel’s (1950) seminal study of the triad, and on anthropological
research from the late 1940s to the 1960s (Bailey, 1959; Barth, 1966; Geertz, 1960;
Gluckman et al., 1949; Wolf, 1956), sociologists used network concepts to define the
work of brokers. They were interested in different sets of triadic configurations, in under-
standing the direction of information flows between brokers and the parties they mediate,
and in questions of side-taking and social cohesion (Granovetter, 1973). These scholars
studied how individual brokers through their networks control flows of information and
communication between isolated groups or individuals. Most influential was Granovetter’s
(1973) structuralist approach outlined in The strength of weak ties, where he highlights the
advantage of brokers to act as outsiders in a space relatively free from social obligations
towards relatives and friendship ties.
As Stovel and Shaw (2012: 140) noted, these structural studies put forward the idea
that brokerage is built from informal, personal relationships and has an impact on the
permeability of group boundaries. Whereas some of the named studies emphasised that
understanding brokerage required close attention to micro-level relations and social psy-
chological processes, other structural studies, especially actor network theory is inter-
ested more in deconstructing the power structures of the nation state and its bureaucratic
machinery. Latour (2005), for example, looks for moments to criticise the indiscriminate
adoption of models and the predictability of mediation rather than for the motifs of indi-
vidual social actors (Lindquist, 2015).

Studies of brokerage in long-distance trade

Economic anthropology provides for a second field in brokerage studies, in particular
with regard to long-distance trade. Brokers have been examined, for example, in the
trans-Sahara and Sahel trade networks where in all towns along a trade route, traders
from the same home region settled down to act as intermediaries between itinerant cara-
van traders, local political rulers and other itinerant traders (Hill, 1966; Perinbam, 1973).
Polly Hill was first to propose the term landlord-brokers for such (mainly male) medi-
ators in long-distance trade. A landlord-broker is a ‘self-appointed functionary’ (Hill,
1966: 364) and embodies three roles: first, he is a dillal (an Arabic word for broker used
by Hausa) when he mediates between buyers and sellers, and supports their commerce
against the payment of a commission; second, he is a landlord who has a large compound
where he temporarily lodges itinerant traders and stores their trade goods; third, he is a
risk-taker as he gives credit and takes responsibility for the creditworthiness and behav-
iour of his customers. The more people ask for his services, the higher rises his prestige.
Bräuchler et al. 2855

In some markets, to act as a broker requires a licence from the local ruler. Some landlord-
brokers also carry out trade themselves, however, they do not travel for trade but com-
mission others to work in their place. Hill (1966) noted that landlord-brokers, although
predominantly working for itinerant traders from their region of origin, have to be neu-
tral in their work and not favour one party. They profit from knowledge gaps on both
sides. Interestingly, and in contrast to the definition put forward by Boissevain (see
below), this mediator is broker and patron at the same time (Hill, 1966).
Such landlord-brokers have been described in detailed studies of trans-Saharan trade
networks (Perinbam, 1973), of the Hausa trading diasporas in different Nigerian towns
(Cohen, 1971; O’Hear, 1986) and between Nigeria and Ghana (Lovejoy, 1980). Perinbam
noted that markets were seldom subject to the sole authority of a single broker, but one
would rather find several specialised brokers in one place. In trading towns, brokers of
all means and levels were active but the landlord-brokers were the most eminent ones
(Perinbam, 1973: 428–432). Philip Curtin (1984) in his study on Cross-Cultural Trade in
World History extended the studies of landlord-brokers and trading diasporas to other
parts of the world. One of his examples is the Hanse trading network that stretched from
the River Rhine in Germany to the Baltic Sea and was organised in similar ways as the
Saharan trading communities.

Brokerage in political and development anthropology

Due to changing socio-political and power constellations worldwide, brokerage activi-
ties, particularly in the Global South, have attracted the attention of anthropologists since
the late 1940s. Such intermediaries were seen as crucial in the context of decolonisation
and modernisation. There was a rising awareness that local communities not only needed
to be studied in their own terms but as parts of larger systems such as the nation-state (for
an overview see e.g. James, 2011; Lindquist, 2015). An article by Gluckman et al. (1949)
was among the first of a series of studies in the political anthropology of brokerage that
analysed the role of village chiefs as go-betweens in colonial settings, elaborating on
their complicated roles in settling conflicts while being torn between contradictory value
systems, and their role in nation building processes (Bierschenk et al., 2002: 11;
Lindquist, 2015). These studies also include Wolf’s (1956: 1072) analysis of ‘economic
and political “brokers” of nation-community relations’, and Geertz’ (1960) research on
the kijaji as key mediators between rural life and religiosity on the one hand and Islamic
modernism and Indonesian nationalism on the other. Over the years, the focus in this
field of brokerage studies shifted from looking at village heads as mediators between
colonial powers and local populations to a focus on, for instance, social inequalities in
developing societies and patron-client relationships involved (Bailey, 1959; Barth, 1966;
Bierschenk et al., 2002: 11–12; Boissevain, 1974; Bräuchler, 2011; Chauvel, 1990;
Hönke and Müller, 2018: 8; Murphy, 1981; Paine, 1971; Press, 1969).
A growing number of studies has recently examined brokerage as an important link in
the development industry where brokers channel resources between the state, NGOs and
local communities (Bierschenk et al, 2000, 2002; Bierschenk and Olivier de Sardan,
2003; Jacobs, 2014; Koster and van Leynseele, 2018; Mosse, 2005; Mosse and Lewis,
2006; Neubert, 1996) and as a mode of governance and service distribution within states
6286 Cultural Dynamics 33(4)
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(Berenschot et al., 2018; Hönke and Müller, 2018: 1). In the field of care and humanitari-
anism, to provide another example, brokers channel resources between donors and, for
instance, victims of natural disasters or social crises (Combinido and Ong, 2017; Fechter,
2019; Vogel and Musamba, 2017).
In all these studies, brokers are described as people who navigate the space and the
interlinkage between community-based local voices and the structural translocal trans-
formations taking place through decolonisation. These studies also characterise brokers
as agents of social change, highlight their influential role as political power brokers
(Wolf, 1956: 1072, 1076), but they also note the conflicting contexts in which this work
occurs, as mentioned earlier. From the 1980s onwards, anthropological studies began to
criticise the structural-functionalist perspective and pointed to the importance of con-
sidering brokerage as a process that is created, shaped and dramatised by individuals
who manage and channel knowledge and meaning (Murphy, 1981: 667). Brokers were
understood to mediate between different levels of integration in the same society and
had to face the conflicts that were raised by the collision of divergent interests. In par-
ticular, Thomas Bierschenk et al. (2002: 4, 12) emphasised the agency of brokers and
the room they create for manoeuvre, for which these authors introduced the notion of
‘arena of interests’.

Other fields covered in the brokerage literature

With the increasing challenges of global neoliberal expansion and conquest, interest in the
role of brokers has accelerated since the 2000s and there has been an increase in studies that
illustrate the wide range of social settings in which brokerage operates (for an overview see
e.g. Lindquist, 2015). Whereas in earlier studies ‘the role of culture broker was seen to be
already occupied by someone in authority within a community’ (Michie, 2014: 40), this
more recent research looks into how not a given status, but the acquisition of specific skills,
to be outlined in more detail below, enabled certain individuals to become brokers. A few
conceptual studies have discussed brokerage in relation to translation (Hönke and Müller,
2018; Mosse and Lewis, 2006), transnational issues (De Jong, 2018) and the conjunctures
of anthropological interest in the topic of brokerage (Lindquist, 2015).
Anthropologists and other social scientists have also explored brokerage within the
fields of global intelligence (Schaffer et al., 2009), human rights (Merry, 2006), knowl-
edge and space (Dotti and Spithoven, 2017; Murphy, 1981), the migration industry
(Alpes, 2013; Kern and Müller-Boeker, 2015; Röschenthaler, 2017; Spaan, 1994), trans-
national movements and border crossings (De Jong, 2018; Lindquist et al., 2012), people
smuggling (Faist, 2014) as well as business and transnational trade, especially in China
(Mann, 1984; Xiao and Tsui, 2007) and in the trade between China and African countries
(Cissé, 2015; Haugen, 2018; Marfaing and Thiel, 2015; Mathews, 2015). Other recent
fields of brokerage include studies on activism and peace brokers (Bräuchler, 2019;
Goddard, 2012), political and power brokers (Bøås, 2012; Hönke and Müller, 2018;
Münch and Veit, 2017), brokers of property and real estate (James, 2011; Reeves, 2016),
the global surrogacy market (Whittaker, 2018), marriage brokerage (Min and Eades,
1995; Song, 2015) and stock brokerage (Hertz, 1998). Given such a broad variety, our
contributions can certainly only cover parts of the thematic and regional spectrum.
Bräuchler et al. 2877

Cultural knowledge plays an important role in many of these brokerage contexts

(Mathews, 2015; Rothman, 2010). Gay (1993: 293) defines ‘a cultural broker’ as some-
body ‘who thoroughly understands different cultural systems, is able to interpret cultural
symbols from one frame of reference to another, can mediate cultural incompatibilities,
and knows how to build bridges or establish linkages across cultures’ (see also Geertz,
1960; Röschenthaler, 2017). Of interest for our special issue are also studies on arts and
popular culture where brokers influence material culture, create popular performances
and markets for new objects (Barber, 1987; Steiner, 1991) or use such art for their activ-
ism (Bräuchler, this issue). However, cultural knowledge is not enough as brokers also
have to have good knowledge of regional, national and international politics and law, or
‘distinct economic and political rationales and moralities’ (Koster and van Leynseele,
2018: 6). These brokers reframe local realities up to make them accessible and intelligible
for national and international agents and ‘translate transnational [and national] ideas and
practices down as ways of grappling with particular local problems’ (Merry, 2006: 42).

Common themes in brokerage studies

Within the existing brokerage literature, we have identified some common themes –
which we do not claim to be an exhaustive list – that we take up, challenge and develop
further in this special issue. These include questions about the necessity of brokers for
bridging knowledge gaps between two parties, about the specialised knowledge and
skills their work requires, the social outcomes of their work, and the paradoxes and moral
ambiguities involved in brokerage. We want to start with a classic in the brokerage litera-
ture, Jeremy Boissevain.
Defining brokerage: Boissevain’s work (1974) is one of the classics that most of the
anthropological literature on brokerage refers to. He set out to define brokerage through
four criteria – criteria that we aim to challenge in our special issue. According to
Boissevain, brokers firstly work on their own account and as an independent ‘third
party’. Different from, for example, trade agents, they are not liable to or employed by
one of the parties for whom they mediate. Secondly, the mediation of brokers between
different parties always implies a two-way process, in which information and/or resources
need to be channelled through the broker as a gatekeeper, for instance, between local and
global stakeholders in both directions. Thirdly, brokers have an interest to make some
profit or commission, from their work of mediation. And fourthly, brokers have access to
what Boissevain calls primary resources that they channel but do not directly control or
own, which distinguishes them from ‘patrons’ who control material assets such as land
and property. It could be added that in contrast to traders, who move material goods,
brokers mainly control immaterial assets such as knowledge, social networks and lan-
guage skills. To be successful in their mediation, brokers also need to impress, persuade
and manipulate people (Boissevain, 1974: 154–159; Murphy, 1981: 667–668). As this
special issue clearly shows, their work is, however, more complex and often overlaps
with other tasks that they combine with their brokerage activity. Some of these criteria
will be taken up again in the following themes.
The necessity of and requirements for brokerage: An important issue in brokerage
studies has been the question whether brokerage is actually needed for the functioning of
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certain sectors. As brokers bridge different contexts, translate between languages and
mediate between parties who would otherwise not meet or had no common language to
communicate (Stovel and Shaw, 2012), this seems to suggest the necessity of brokers.
Some scholars argue however that brokers are not indispensable but rather step in and
create their own jobs where they see windows of opportunity to make a living for them-
selves (Murphy, 1981). Such windows of opportunity also open up, for instance, in situ-
ations where the parties prefer not to work too closely together, although they could
(Röschenthaler, this issue). This bridging activity implies the capacity of the broker for
innovation, as many scholars mention, due to the cultural or knowledge difference
between the groups involved (Perinbam, 1973). Brokers profit from an existing knowl-
edge differential in markets or other social settings, from the lack of information, trans-
parency and networks on both sides.
The opportunity for brokers to step in arises in cases where they have necessary
knowledge, skills and networks (Bierschenk et al., 2002: 21–23). Importantly, brokers
need to have experiences in contexts beyond the specific locality in focus. It is such
experience that allows them to learn registers of competence needed for brokerage and
the changing of roles, for example as a political activist, an artist or a journalist (Bräuchler,
this issue), or for turning from a villager into a government official implementing pro-
grammes in a rural region (Epple, this issue). The registers include the jargon and the
behaviour of other spheres and spaces, for example, mastering the linguistic and cultural
codes of local contexts and colonial regimes (Márquez García, this issue); organisational
competence and how to become a federator who is capable of bringing together a critical
mass of people, groups or associations; ‘scenographic competence’ (Bierschenk et al.,
2002: 20); and social or relational skills that allow the broker to participate in and estab-
lish links between all spaces and contexts involved.
Social outcome and moral ambiguity of brokerage: Another point that the brokerage lit-
erature and the contributions to this special issue are concerned about is the actual outcome
of brokerage and the often proclaimed moral ambiguity of brokers. Brokers are often
depicted as profiteers of the communicational and cultural misfit between two or more
social and cultural systems. Boissevain described the broker as entrepreneur who innovates
and takes risks (see also Röschenthaler and Schulz, 2016) and as ‘a professional manipulator
of people and information who brings about communication for profit’ (Boissevain, 1974:
146, 148). According to Wolf (1956: 1076), it is in their interest to maintain tensions between
the different spheres to make themselves indispensable. Successful mediation on the one
hand and the assumed profit-oriented self-centredness on the other make brokers ‘double
agents’ (van Leynseele, 2018: 3) and morally ambiguous figures (James, 2011: 319). The
field of work and venture that brokers create is often characterised by issues of manipulation
and control, including moral concerns such as opportunism or the struggle for a common
good. The parties between which brokers mediate often pursue divergent interests and bro-
kers dwell in intermediate settings where frictious relations evolve in predictable and unpre-
dictable ways (Bräuchler, 2019; De Jong, 2018; Lindquist, 2015). Brokers work in what
Bierschenk et al. (2002: 6) called ‘local political arenas’ and must face the conflicts raised
by the collision of these interests (Gluckman et al., 1949; Wolf, 1956: 1076).
Stovel and Shaw (2012: 140) also noted a paradoxical effect of brokerage: on the one
hand, it can ease interaction, enhance economic development and political action; and on
Bräuchler et al. 2899

the other, it can encourage exploitation, corruption, personal profit, the accumulation of
power and thus enhance inequalities. Brokers bridge communication divides but at the
same time, they might be interested in keeping the parties apart for whom they mediate
in order to not put themselves out of business. The issue of moral ambiguity is also taken
up by Faist (2014), explaining how brokers help the parties they work for and are out for
profit at the same time, which is also the basis of mistrust towards brokers as it can ques-
tion their moral integrity. In a similar way, Southall (1978) differentiated between the
positive image of brokers as an emanation of civil society and the negative image as a
parasite and source of mismanagement. To add to that ambiguity, Irwin Press (1969) has
described brokers as both admired innovators and as marginalised individuals whose,
sometimes unpredictable, activities are met with resistance.

Reaching beyond existing scholarship of brokerage

This special issue aims to develop further and go beyond existing typologies and ideal-
ised notions of brokers that often disembed them from their specific sociocultural and
historical contexts, as Faist (2014: 40) pointed out for brokerage in international migra-
tion. We are thus not only interested in the mediating capacities of brokers but propose
to look closer at their actual work in context, their negotiation and networking strategies,
and their specific biographies, qualifications and skills. Our contributions also investi-
gate the legitimations and narratives that are linked to their brokerage activities, the
social processes their work triggers, the emergence of new brokers and the chains (and
hierarchies) of brokers that evolve through continuing mediation, as well as the limits of
brokerage. This special issue reaches beyond the findings of and propositions made by
existing scholarship in five ways that we will briefly elaborate in the following.
New actors, refined technologies, larger spaces: Depending on who and where bro-
kers are, they have access to different spaces and places that, in turn, can equip them with
specific resources, forms of knowledge and networks – the ‘spatial dimension of broker-
age’ (Dotti and Spithoven, 2017: 2216). The more places and networks a broker con-
nects, the more powerful s/he is (compare Castells, 2010: 502): ‘a broker’s unique
“agency” is a function of her network position’ (Goddard, 2012: 505) that allows them
‘to formulate multivocal legitimation’, which implies that ‘ideas and symbols can have
different meanings depending on who is listening, or more accurately, depending upon
the network position of the audience’ (Goddard, 2012: 506). They do not dissolve differ-
ence, but try to make it intelligible. Given changing transport infrastructure and com-
munication technologies, the way brokerage works changes too. Our contributions look
into brokerage not as a given status, but analyse the emergence of new kinds of brokers
who qualify through specific skills and the use of a broad variety of new communication
and transport technologies (see e.g. Bräuchler, Röschenthaler, this issue; see also
Lindquist, 2017: 215). Such brokers not only act within and between specific localities,
or between local communities and the state, but they can also effectively mediate between
these localities and global dynamics and transnational paradigms.
Brokers’ biographies, agency and self-description: The term ‘broker’ has been devel-
oped in specific contexts in Western Europe, as mentioned above. In other parts of the
world, other terms are in use with often divergent semantic fields to describe such
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mediating activities. Often, brokers and the parties involved avoid the term broker as an
international construct, the connotations of which do not match their local understand-
ings. In this context it is also important to differentiate between how brokers refer to
themselves and how the people they work with perceive them, that is, whether they are
considered important actors with agency (Murphy, 1981) or deviant figures (Simmel,
1950), or both, and whether their reputation varies according to the socioeconomic con-
ditions in a society. This is important as brokers need to be recognised and respected by
the larger national or global and the local communities whose members do have to let
themselves being brokered, in order to achieve something (Michie, 2014: 86).
As indicated before and as elaborated in more detail in our contributions, being a
broker is not a status or a position that one attains and keeps but it needs to grow from
within, through a combination of specific skills, capabilities, motivations and networks.
Some brokers need to create their own job, others are requested to slip into that position
by certain parties; they need to adopt this social role and staying in business or continu-
ing doing good requires ongoing efforts. Bierschenk et al. (2002: 13, 19) speak ‘of “pro-
cedural discovery” as opportunities that present themselves, and are being taken up, in
the course of action’ in a certain context, at a certain moment in time. It is thus crucial to
look closer at brokers’ life stories and their embeddedness in social, political, and histori-
cal contexts, including, in some cases, their religious and economic backgrounds
(Knodel, Röschenthaler, this issue) as well as the career paths that brokers envision.
Moral ambiguity, vulnerability and limits of brokerage: In this special issue, we also
aim to refine predominant notions of moral ambiguity and deconstruct prevailing narra-
tives of brokers as either profiteers or as people who are doing good. Brokers are exposed
to much more complex challenges. Going beyond black and white, bedevilling or prais-
ing brokerage, we put a stronger focus on the human side of brokerage, the brokers’
emotions, personal investments, vulnerabilities and sufferings (Bräuchler, Knodel,
Walther, this issue). Moral ambiguity is not just a question of intention or actual out-
comes, but also a result of the brokers’ structural position, for instance between govern-
ment institutions and non-governmental refugee aid organisations (Walther, this issue),
which can trigger mistrust towards brokers who have the difficult task to do good to both
sides and cope with the burden of ‘multivocal legitimation’ (see above).
Brokers are agents of diffusion and change (Malets and Zajak, 2014: 251), which
requires translation between different spheres and contexts. Translations can be acts of
power and control, not only by, for instance, translating local grievances into the more
powerful language of transnational human rights (Merry, 2006: 42), but also through the
brokers’ power to fix cultural meaning in public space. Rebecca Givan et al. rightly argue
that such diffusion processes can be influenced by the brokers’ preferences, beliefs and
interests (Givan et al., 2010: 12), a good example being local NGOs as the profiteers of
outside interventions for development (Knodel, this issue).
In the brokers’ translation efforts, transformations between symbolic, social and cul-
tural capital take place that can, at times, also be transformed into more material, eco-
nomic or political resources (Boissevain, 1974; Jacobs, 2014: 310) and often lead to
upward mobility (Bierschenk et al., 2002: 24). Brokerage can also exploit social dynam-
ics to perpetuate or create social, economic and/or political inequalities or undermine
democratic accountability (e.g. Berenschot et al., 2018). Our findings do confirm this.
Bräuchler et al. 291
11

With a dependency on brokers for access to services (Arambewela-Colley, Epple,

Walther, this issue) and other resources such as a global international human rights rheto-
ric (Bräuchler, this issue), knowledge of the rules of international trade (Röschenthaler,
this issue), knowledge of national laws and bureaucracies (Epple, this issue) or the skills
to tap into international donor funding (Knodel, this issue), the preferences and actions
of individuals and communities who rely on such brokerage can be manipulated (Stokes
et al., 2013).
However, reducing brokers to mere manipulators for their own benefits would sim-
plify the motivational landscape of brokers. Setting personal interests and gains aside,
the brokers we are looking at in our empirical work, for instance, defend the interests of
local communities in national political spaces and international businesses (Bräuchler,
this issue; see also Bierschenk et al., 2002: 37), they struggle for the implementation of
national law and the needs of local communities (Epple, this issue) or refugees (Walther,
this issue), or they take efforts to make a Western health system accessible and intelligi-
ble to local cultural communities (Arambewela-Colley, this issue). There are clear indi-
cations that brokers can empower the parties they are mediating between, in particular
when partisan brokers (Faist, 2014: 45–46) struggle, for instance, for indigenous and
human rights against state intrusion or exploitation by global players (e.g. Bräuchler, this
issue) or provide their communities access to international donor funding for develop-
ment projects (e.g. Knodel, this issue). This does not imply that they cannot, at the same
time, perpetuate inequalities and benefit from their brokerage (Faist, 2014: 40, see also
Márquez García, this issue). In most cases, it is not a matter of either or but the result of
complex negotiation processes and dynamics that the broker is not always in control of.
Hence, it is not a matter of taking sides only but of brokering for a better future as such.
What has also been ignored in the literature so far is that engaging in brokerage often
comes with high costs, be it partisan brokers in Indonesia who fight for indigenous peo-
ples’ rights against resource exploitation and face serious threats by formal and informal
security forces (Bräuchler, this issue); government employees in Ethiopia who broker
between the state government and their own cultural communities, struggling with pres-
sure and harassment to implement national law and meet cultural expectations of their
communities at the same time (Epple, this issue); NGOs with a mission to integrate refu-
gees that need to address the widely diverging needs of government and refugees
(Walther, this issue); local development brokers who need to invest and pay out of their
own pocket for their first projects in order to build up their networks and engage in pro-
motional work for upcoming project proposals (Knodel, this issue); or self-proclaimed
brokers in trade who face the constant threat of a failing market (Röschenthaler, this
issue). How do brokers themselves cope with their own intersectionality, their being
within and outside of society or a specific community at the same time? How do they
cope with their highly insecure positions, constantly having to work towards the feasibil-
ity, visibility and sustainability of their brokerage mechanisms?
Brokerage chains, hierarchies and networks: Next to brokers’ particular life stories,
our focus is on chains of brokers that is the stringing together of multiple brokers.
William Murphy (1981: 677) is probably first to mention that different brokers are inter-
dependent: ‘In his subsequent role as the main broker between the chiefdom and the
national system, Kama [the former leader of a chiefdom and son of a powerful Kpelle
292
12 Cultural Dynamics 33(4)
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warrior in Liberia] helped to create a nested system of local patronage and brokerage in
which brokers at each level relied on influential brokers at higher levels for access to the
national system’ (1981: 677). Drawing on a case study by Honoret Edja (2000) in Benin,
and following Neubert (1996), Bierschenk and colleagues (2002: 25) called such net-
working of brokers on different levels a ‘brokerage chain’. In the Liberia case, the
knowledge broker was dependent on other brokers who work in higher political levels
but he also worked with both villagers’ fears and admiration through the accumulation of
power, of symbols of modernity and the cultivation of ‘impression management’
(Murphy, 1981: 669, 677).
Broker chains allow for the bridging of larger geographical and ideational divides
than could be managed by only one broker. With few exceptions, the brokerage literature
has not paid enough attention yet to that phenomenon. Also, there is a clear gap when it
comes to hierarchies within such brokerage chains and the collaboration of brokers in a
place or a region (see also Southall, 1978), and how brokers involved collaborate or
compete with each other and forward information and resources to new levels. In our
special issue, we analyse, for example, how broker chains allow for the translation and
the conceptual transfer of local notions of mental health into international clinical jargon
(Arambewela-Colley, this issue) or from local ecologies and cosmologies to transna-
tional environmental activism (Bräuchler, this issue), and the other way around. The
networks of brokers also include the transversal connections into various social, eco-
nomic or cultural sectors through which they create their superior knowledge activity
(Röschenthaler, this issue).
Part-time brokers and in/formal brokerage: With this special issue we also want
to challenge the idea of brokers as independent and working on their own accounts
by shedding light on the interdependencies implied by and the broad spectrum of
brokerage, from institutionalised forms of brokerage to informal brokerage, from
state-employed actors to NGOs and individuals who work autonomously. Also, the
degree of institutionalisation or independence can change throughout the brokerage
process. Additionally, brokerage is part of changing sets of overlapping tasks and
the brokers’ roles intersect with other activities such as with being landlords and
merchants (Röschenthaler, this issue) or with being local political rulers and cash
crop farmers (Márquez García, this issue). In other case studies, we only find some
of the more prominent components of brokerage, and the overlap with other roles
steps into the foreground such as in the case of activism in Indonesia (Bräuchler,
this issue) and political brokerage in Ethiopia through government employees
(Epple, this issue).
In the course of their careers, most brokers go through several stages, acquiring neces-
sary skills, emerging as brokers, becoming part- or full-time brokers, and also assuming
additional roles that consolidate (or challenge) their professionalism and potentially ren-
der their status less vulnerable. Brokers might also formalise their business or become
part of an institution or organisation that has specialised in brokerage. Our case studies
illustrate the broad spectrum of brokerage that occurs not only in the classical sense
where brokers work on their own account, for their own benefit, but where their fields of
activity extend from independent informal brokerage to institutionalised forms of the
Bräuchler et al. 293
13

activity, from individual to collective brokerage, and from individuals who work autono-
mously to actors employed by NGOs and the government.

Concluding reflections
Building on the aforementioned studies, our contributors set out to develop new perspec-
tives on brokerage through the innovative analysis and the close conjunction of broker-
age with concepts such as belonging and ethnicity, entrepreneurship and technology,
health care and law enforcement, resonance and indigeneity – concepts that have not
previously been discussed by brokerage scholars. Through its unique comparative set-up
and the innovative engagement with such concepts, this special issue sheds new light on
the intricate dynamics and social relationships that the figure of the broker is embedded
in. This special issue thus sets out to both refine the concept of brokerage by uncovering
new aspects of the mediation processes and broaden it far beyond the four criteria that we
took as a starting point by shedding light on the diverging nuances of brokerage.
We use brokerage as an analytical framework and our contributions illustrate the
added value of this analytical tool and what it reveals that would otherwise remain hid-
den or unseen. At the same time, we are aware of possible pitfalls when essentialising
and overstretching the concept. None of the actors that are in the centre of our considera-
tions are solely brokers. It is a role that they take on but it should not be mistaken for the
actors themselves. With a focus on a refined and broadened notion of brokerage there is
always the risk to mistake any supposed mediator as broker and read the concept into any
context, which is not helpful and would rather weaken the concept. Therefore, it is
important to analyse brokers in their specific cultural, social and political contexts and be
clear about parallel roles such as traders, spokesmen, gatekeepers, government officials,
kins(wo)men or artists and overlapping activities such as translating, networking and
spinning. Whereas brokers in some cases combine all these roles and activities, not all of
these roles or activities taken on their own imply brokerage. Importantly, we also keep
an eye on the limits of brokerage as a concept (see above) and as an act of intermediation
because of, for instance, structural restrictions as well as vulnerabilities and harassment
that often accompany the broker’s position.
Our contributions focus on both: how brokers themselves see their activities and how
they are perceived by others in their specific contexts – by those who profit from their
brokerage, those who might encounter disadvantages as well as those who are only indi-
rectly involved. It is obvious that brokers shape and influence the notion of the fields that
they handle as either, for example, desirable or unappealing, highly competitive or read-
ily accessible. In either case, it is evident that all parties are gaining something in the
process of brokering: the broker, even when in the role of a classical do-gooder (e.g.
gaining prestige), marginalised indigenous people or villagers (e.g. gaining access to
resources), as well as powerful national and international actors or donors (e.g. getting
access to the targets of their activities and policies). By adopting such a perspective, we
place all parties on the same epistemological level, which is a less hierarchical way to see
the world, however, without ignoring the potential inequalities brokerage creates, rein-
forces or brokers themselves undergo in the relevant contexts.
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14 Cultural Dynamics 33(4)
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the members of this DAAD-UA-funded project and the participants of our
project-related workshops in Melbourne, Konstanz, Mainz and Frankfurt for their invaluable feed-
back to first drafts and more advanced versions of the contributions to this special issue. Special
thanks to Thomas Bierschenk for his inspiring feedback at our Mainz workshop. A huge thanks
also to all contributors for their enthusiasm and collegiality during the various rounds of internal
review before submission and to the anonymous reviewers.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/
or publication of this article: This special issue is one of the outcomes of a project-related exchange
of scholars from Monash University Melbourne, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and
Goethe University Frankfurt (2019-2021) that is funded by the German Academic Exchange
Service (DAAD) and Universities Australia (UA).

ORCID iDs
Birgit Bräuchler https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4599-3582
Kathrin Knodel https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2631-3692
Ute Röschenthaler https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5005-2293

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