Urbanities,
Vol. 4
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No 2
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November 2014
© 2014
Urbanities
25
market. All this material greatly contributed to my analysis and was integrated into the
writing up process.
Bestor (2004) describes the Tsukiji’s market while warning the reader that the market
is not fixed in time and space but rather changes constantly. He notes that this kind of
description may seem to ‘freeze the place in time’ but, despite this inconvenience, he
acknowledges the need to provide a sense of the market’s spatial layout, in order to
understand how ‘[t]ime and space […] significantly construct the social structure of the
marketplace’ (Bestor 2004: 55). I would like to exposit the market’s ‘well-ordered chaos’ (De
La Pradelle 2006: 17) and this can only be achieved through a detailed description of how
space is used, occupied and structured.
Urban Markets and the Senses
Recent times have been marked by the increasing urbanisation of the world population and
the never-ending industrialisation of food systems (Tscharntke et al. 2012), stimulating a
greater interest in urban and food studies. A growing desire for more trustworthy sources of
food has emerged in academic and public discourses (Counihan and Siniscalchi eds 2014).
Food markets around the globe are undergoing radical changes (Téchoueyres 2007) and this is
especially apparent in urban markets (Herzfeld 2006). Here, I address the market as a space
under construction: ‘a product of relations-between, relations which are necessarily embedded
material practices’ (Massey 2005: 9). Intending place as socially constructed, reproduced,
lived and experienced (Lefebvre 1991) implies that ‘place’ is not just a location where things
happen but is recognised in its own complexity. Current debate supports this view (Gupta and
Ferguson eds 1997, Harvey 1985, Low and Lawrence-Zuniga eds 2003, Rodman 2003, Zukin
1995 and 2010).
According to Lebfevre (1991: 46), ‘[i]f space is produced, if there is a productive
process, then we are dealing with history’. This history of space recalls a conceptualisation of
time and space as formed by cumulative layers, in De Certeau’s (1984:200) own wording by
‘imbricated strata’. De Certeau (1984: 200) argues that these layers ‘are available for analysis;
they form a manageable surface’. From this perspective, places comprise stratifications of
meanings hidden in spatial practices observable through ethnographic scrutiny. Rodman
(2003:208) says that places are ‘local and multiple’, referring to them as ‘polysemic’. These
places ‘bespeak people’s practices, their history, their conflicts, their accomplishments’
(Rodman 2003: 214). This connection between practice and place challenges a static and
simplistic idea of place in favour of an analysis that takes into account multiple aspects, such
as the subjective, yet cultural sensory perception of people.
Assuming that ‘[e]xchanges involve categories, classifications of intended results,
commodities and relationships’ (Davis 1992: 63), a continuous re-negotiation of social
categories can be observed in the ever-changing urban scenarios. Public spaces change
alongside political, economic and cultural transformations, becoming often territories of
contestation and social divisions. The ability by social actors in the market to manoeuvre
through social constraints is deeply connected to the performance of identity and the sense of
place is intertwined with the creation of boundaries (Bestor 2004).
