From Informal Markets to non-hegemonic Politics of Value: Crosscutting approaches between Porto Alegre and Buenos Aires in the production of street objects and subjects

Authors

  • Moisés Kopper Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.11606/2179-0892.ra.2015.108573

Keywords:

Informality, Formalization, Value, Ethnography, Camelódromo, La Salada

Abstract

The anthropology of informal markets always faced with some difficulty the basic problem of proposing definitions of what constitutes the informal. Economists and sociologists have proposed all too generalizing conceptualizations, linking it to the formal economy; anthropologists run into excessively particularized conceptions, often denying the heuristic ability of the notion. This paper suggests a third answer to the problem. It explores the economic policies that attach value to subjects, objects and locations, framing and producing them in relation to each other. It focuses on how competing discourses on informality – imagined, mobile and incomplete – take form and are performed. Ethnographically, the article draws from the transition of a street market to a popular mall in Porto Alegre/RS; and on the public debates between journalists, businessmen and traders about the expansion of the world’s biggest informal marketplace, called “La Salada”, in Buenos Aires

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Author Biography

  • Moisés Kopper, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
    doutorando em Antropologia Social pelo Programa de Pós-Graduação da Ufrgs. É mestre em Antropologia Social e bacharel em Ciências Sociais pela mesma instituição

Published

2015-12-22

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Kopper, M. (2015). From Informal Markets to non-hegemonic Politics of Value: Crosscutting approaches between Porto Alegre and Buenos Aires in the production of street objects and subjects. Revista De Antropologia, 58(2), 235-262. https://doi.org/10.11606/2179-0892.ra.2015.108573