‘Elders among traders’: Market committees and everyday state formation in Mogadishu

This working paper aims at understanding state formation by looking at local politics in urban markets of Mogadishu. In response to the violence of the early 1990s and the withdrawal of the municipality from the marketplaces, market traders organised daily governance by creating market committees that I call here ‘elders among traders.’ Based on ethnographic material collected over a year and half of fieldwork in two marketplaces of Mogadishu, I reveal and illustrate dynamics of state formation by looking at state imageries and daily encounters around security, taxation, ideals of neutrality and recognition. The analysis of the working of the market committees, their daily interaction with different players – state officials, civil servants, soldiers, the invisible presence of Harakat al Mujahidiin al-Shabaab (HMS) – as well as war memories give us insight into state formation dynamics, as paradoxical effects of daily encounters with municipal representatives and of their representations.