From the streets to the indoor markets: São Paulos popular trade areas

Author(s)

Carlos Freire da Silva

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2014-09-01

Examining board members

Vera da Silva Telles; Alvaro Augusto Comin; Nadya Araujo Guimaraes; Jacob Carlos Lima; Fernando Rabossi

• Advisor: Vera da Silva Telles

Abstract

This research proposes a discussion on the transformations that have been taking place at the popular tradicional markets in São Paulo downtown, which are: Brás, 25 de março e Santa Ifigênia, through the so called galleries and late-night-early-morning faires. Nowadays, thousands of resellers, coming from the peripheral areas of town, from the metropolitan region, from inter-state and from other states, go into those areas searching for trade oportunities. Besides Brazilian people, these areas receive people from Bolivia, China, Paraguay, Peru, Leban, Angola, among others, who act as distribuitors of local produce, importers of products and buyers who aim at reselling the goods in their original countries. This way, these places have started a different dialogue with the urban economy of the city. The control and fiscalization applied to these spaces have also changed, not only through the policies of formalization of certain practices that are tolerated, and even incentivated, but also through the recrudescence of the police repression, in which certain behaviors and practices have begun to be fought against and repressed. This study made an attempt to problematize the local assemblages that constitute themselves around the development of these popular markets, amidst regulation ways, practices of control and fiscalization done by different state agents, and the dynamics of the locally placed actors. It is about problematizing these assemblages, the ways in which they are formed in the intersection of goods circuits coming from different origins, which the mediations in play are and in which way they are connected with the new management forms and strategies of commercial circulation and distribuition (AU)