Maria Vouyouka Sereti, Ph.D. | Director of Educational Affairs, Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation (USA) says:
Outdoor markets, however colorful and vibrant, always project some degree of humility, especially when contrasted with our idea of a supermarket or when they are set against the background of imposing architectural structures.
And yet, the outdoor/street market scenes in Africa, China, Guatemala and Europe, become tools of capturing global inequalities. The presence (or absence) and the degree of rigidity of boundaries (between the products and the sellers; among the products, the sellers and the environment; between the sellers and the potential customers; or among the different groups of sellers and products) are important factors in each scene as they become cues of different levels of economic development.
Ania Sher | Stony Brook University says:
Much is written about the social construction of markets and their embeddedness in the local social structures of relations. There are several different Guatemalan markets depicted in which Guatemalan women (and their children) sell the products of their own labor. Because these are obviously local markets, they reveal the social structure of the local community in which women complete the entire circle of production and sale of small-scale agricultural products and tourist goods. These are women’s markets. Men do not participate in these tasks. It would be interesting to know if these markets are a recent phenomenon connected to men earning money away from home communities, or women were always solely responsible for tending small fields, domestic birds and small animals.
You must be a Rachel Tanur Memorial Prize applicant to submit an essay response.
2 Essays
Maria Vouyouka Sereti, Ph.D. | Director of Educational Affairs, Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation (USA) says:
Outdoor markets, however colorful and vibrant, always project some degree of humility, especially when contrasted with our idea of a supermarket or when they are set against the background of imposing architectural structures.
And yet, the outdoor/street market scenes in Africa, China, Guatemala and Europe, become tools of capturing global inequalities. The presence (or absence) and the degree of rigidity of boundaries (between the products and the sellers; among the products, the sellers and the environment; between the sellers and the potential customers; or among the different groups of sellers and products) are important factors in each scene as they become cues of different levels of economic development.
Ania Sher | Stony Brook University says:
Much is written about the social construction of markets and their embeddedness in the local social structures of relations. There are several different Guatemalan markets depicted in which Guatemalan women (and their children) sell the products of their own labor. Because these are obviously local markets, they reveal the social structure of the local community in which women complete the entire circle of production and sale of small-scale agricultural products and tourist goods. These are women’s markets. Men do not participate in these tasks. It would be interesting to know if these markets are a recent phenomenon connected to men earning money away from home communities, or women were always solely responsible for tending small fields, domestic birds and small animals.
You must be a Rachel Tanur Memorial Prize applicant to submit an essay response.