Streetwise sales and the social order of city streets

Abstract

This paper analyses how a Big Issue vendor approached passers-by and how they responded, how recognizable courses of social and economic activity were interactionally produced from initiation through to some conclusion. The paper recovers how the vendor's work was contextually embedded in the urban landscape, how it was constrained by, and actively shaped, the social order of the street. Drawing on video-audio recordings the paper contributes to a growing body of ethnographic and ethnomethodological research which has emphasized the embodied, contingent and interactional character of economic activity. By examining such materials, the paper is well positioned to describe how the vendor found his market on the street, social interventions that propelled passers-by into buying behaviour. The paper sheds light on now familiar encounters which occur millions of times each week in the UK and beyond.

Urban markets and diversity: towards a research agenda

“…The challenge of providing a more comprehensive account of markets necessitates, first and foremost, combinatorial methodologies (e.g., the use of time-lapse photography in Llewellyn and Burrow 2008), but also a 'publications plus' strategy that will include extensive audio recordings and visual images. Websites are the obvious choice to facilitate multimedia documentation of markets, and these need to be built along with more standard academic publications.…”

Coexistence and conflicts between shopping malls and street markets in growing cities: Analysis of shoppers’ behaviour

“…The street vendors are contextually embedded in the urban landscape, and operate within the urban social order ( Llewellyn and Burrow, 2008 ). Location of the street and size of the market play a critical role in establishing the socio-economic thrust among the customers in the area ( Bass, 2000 ).…”

Breaching barriers to collaboration in public spaces

“…By building on concepts that are familiar to street-sales, the students placed themselves and their activity in the category of unwanted solicitations that can quite unproblematically be ignored by the general public. And unlike the "professional" street-vendor [32], the students did not have the confidence or practice required to seek out and target individuals for the kind of interaction, which, once begun, is hard to shake off.…”

“…Studies of urban contexts testify that individuals generally avoid engaging with strangers [47,14], erecting social boundaries and "immunizing themselves against the personal claims and expectations of others" [45, p. 12], perhaps more so in urban settings, where individuals instead practice 'civil inattention' [19,20]. As a consequence of this, initiating an interaction with a stranger in a public space is a social accomplishment that requires significant skills [32,36]. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page.…”