Unveiling the stranger: a new look at peripatetic peoples / Joseph C. Berland, Aparna Rao --
"Once upon a time": reconciling the stranger / Michael J. Casimir --
PART I: THE MIDDLE EAST --
Roving traders among the Bedouin of South Sinai / Emanuel Marx --
Biography and identity in Damascus: a Syrian Nawar chief / Frank Meyer --
PART II: AFRICA --
Afflictions of the stomach: Smith as "stranger" among the Tuareg / Susan Rasmussen --
"They work to eat and they eat to work": M'allemîn craftsmen, classification, and discourse among the Bidân nobility of Mauritania / Mariella Villasante Cervello --
Strangers in their own land: social resources and domestic fluidity of the peripatetic Karretjie people of the South African Karoo / Michael De Jongh --
Local strangers: the Nile Valley Gypsies in the ethnic mosaic of Sudan / Bernhard Streck --
Hunters, foragers, and singing smiths: the metamorphoses of peripatetic peoples in Africa / Michael Bollig --
PART III: ASIA --
Why Bulbuls bark: conflict, continuity, and identity among professional strangers / Joseph C. Berland --
Professional strangers in urban Pakistan: a note on peripatetic specialists / Jürgen Wasim Frembgen --
Strangers and liminal beings: some thoughts on peripatetics, insiders, and outsiders in Southwest Asia / Aparna Rao --
Enduring strangers: mughat, lyuli, and other peripatetics in the social fabric of Central Asia / Shirin Akiner --
The Orang Suku Laut: owners of or strangers in the Riau archipelago of Indonesia? / Cynthia Chou.

Essays on peripatetic peoples that stress their roles as cultural brokers, entrepreneurial middlemen, and traders.