“Tianguis” are street markets that date back to Pre-Hispanic ages and are still now the main form of popular trade in Mexico. This paper is the result of a study of approximately a dozen “tianguis” from 300 that exist in the Metropolitan Area of Guadalajara city. Various ethnographic research tools were used to focus on diverse daily life fragments: recordings of pieces of street conversations, observations, descriptions of situations, interviews, field recordings or ‘in depth’ interviews. A collage text is created with the main objective to be consistent but not ‘representative’ of what a ‘tianguis’ is. This research aims to show the tianguis way(s) of being, an ‘adhoc’ artifact that explores the junctions between culture, urban space and consumption. The importance of showing this convergence of street markets is political, so this element should be added to the equation. Although a ‘tianguis’ is not only a flea market, it’s possible to show it as a challenging place with certain considerations on consumption due to the mix of goods that are offered there: second hand goods, recycled things, D.I.Y assemblages, piracy, forgery, smuggling and stolen things. The presence of these abject objects gives peculiar characteristics to this kind of popular consumption thus putting it in a mainstream consumer divergent level. With the boom of the ‘tianguis’ and the inclusion of non-used goods, the practice of haggling continues to become an institution. Haggling in the ‘tianguis’ is ubiquitous and everyone accepts it unlike established businesses where the practice is almost non-existent. This has led me to think that ‘tianguis’ are not only important for the social sciences as a more or less "folk" cultural practice but as a practice that challenges some dominant economic paradigm. While in established businesses the price of commodities runs parallel to the concrete practices of sellers and buyers, especially in the latter, in a ‘tianguis’ market everyone participates to some extent in the active construction of the value of goods. Through ethnographic observation a tianguis can be constructed as a space where the so called "purchase" is a combination of exchange, negotiation and gift that defies traditional categories of consumption anthropology, specially, the traditional confrontation between "exchange trade” and "gift", one of its theoretic pillars. Another question that introduces the tianguis experience revolves around the obsolescence of things. The tianguis junkyard involves a vital extension of the goods; it’s a re-commoditization of trash. Overall, the revival of objects in a ‘tianguis’ is thanks to the construction of new symbolic-material assemblies from obsolescent objects. The tactics are somewhat popular tricks for establishing "the weakest position against the strongest". These tactics of ‘the poor’ involves using the materials of others to generate their own. The temporary modification of urban space is inseparable from the existence of the swap meets. It is a vernacular architecture layer, not just the official urban superimposed but uses the latter in order to function: parasitic urbanism. The tianguis replaced the false ideology of State that proclaimed the "public" as “common” while imposing the streets as exclusive roadways for cars. The conditions of a possible emergence of a ‘tianguis’ are the possibility of the symbolic- material influence through different conflicting areas of urban life. This is possible because below the floor of a ‘tianguis’ there is a fertile ground of "porosity" (Benjamin, 1924), which runs transversely with popular culture. It is the ability to influence or for “porosity” which allows tactics, bargaining, and ultimately, the tianguis. So, Mexican urban culture porosity is the tactic for popular consumption. Porosity as a condition for tactics is what made the "tianguis alchemy": the passage from one area to another. Thus, culture becomes economy, legal confused with illegal, work looks like enjoyment, trading looks like a friendly relationship, the street is not for cars but for the people and public spaces have the warmth and are "emotionality" charged as private places. This ability to influence between different worlds gives the tianguis the character of "liminal" space. The liminal features that reproduce in some experiences with objects of those who "leave" and "enter" the tianguis. I could say that part of the street markets "leave with the objects". As Trojans, some things "hide" the liminality of the tianguis in its "interior". They are objects that do things for which they were not intended, which is another feature of the tactical use of tianguis objects.
El conjuro urbano. Táctica y estrategia del tianguis mexicano.
Espinosa Zepeda, H. (Author). 30 Sept 2013
Student thesis: Doctoral thesis
Student thesis: Doctoral thesis