Dynamics of Marketplace Inclusion and Consumption in Bazaars as ‘Other’ Retail Spaces

We explore the dynamics of consumption experience in traditional bazaars constructed as the new ‘other’ retail spaces. The bazaar, once known to be the consumption space that was a signifier of the lower class identity (Urry 1991) and is characterized by economic poverty (Varman and Costa 2009), is redesigned to include upper classes, now in the form of High Society Bazaars (HSBs) in Turkey, and enhance shopping experience for diverse social classes. We study consumption of space with a distinct difference from earlier studies, where the spaces consumed are often organized by authorities, whether municipal governments or private owners of spaces (Benjamin 2002; Miller 1998; Urry 1995). In the HSB, space is mostly designed by its inhabitants; the sellers, who are small vendors independent of the authorities, and the shoppers, who influence how the stalls will be stocked and displayed by their motion as they visit the HSB. We aim to contribute to the literature on consumption of space through reflecting the transition from consumption of space (Belk et al. 1988; Sherry 1990a, 1990b, 1998; Urry 1995) to construction of space that is an active, contested and transitive process involving negotiation (Goodman et al. 2010). Most importantly, we discover the means used by consumers to construct and negotiate their space in the HSB. This focus led us discover the dynamics of identity politics of/within consumption spaces. Findings of the qualitative data obtained as a result of focus group and in-depth interviews with bazaar consumers and sellers, and participant observations reveal the means of constructing space in the HSB, which include hybridization, licensing, and negotiation. HSB is constructed as a hybrid space, not the ‘original’ for either the westernized or the traditional, thus a different order for both, but one that allows meeting and experiencing the other. Observed in the upper class experiences of HSB, the strange (people’s and sellers’ attitudes and attires) mixed in with the familiar (wares being sold, selling and buying going on), thus the hybrid, attracts the ‘westernized’; for them the HSB is a familiarly novel, engaging, and entertaining environment. The HSB is primitive, untamed, and not fully ‘cultured’ or rationally ordered, but it is seductive for the same reasons. For the lower class, the presence of upper classes in the HSB has turned these bazaars into something bazaars were not before, a different ‘other’ space, a hybrid, where the other can be encountered.