Urban Marketplaces Research Articles

Transaction cost effects on maize spatial price differences in Njombe market, Tanzania

Previous studies have demonstrated that tangible and intangible transaction costs influence spatial price differences. The difference between the prices at which producers sell their goods, and the prices at which consumers purchase them is exacerbated by transaction costs. This indicates that farmers receive a lower price from buyers, who then charge consumers a greater price at urban marketplaces. However, existing documentation provides limited information on the relationship between spatial price differences and their drivers. Most research focused primarily on the co-movement of prices and the co-integration test, with little attention paid to the effects of transaction costs on spatial price differences. Thus, the paucity of information in the literature motivated the undertaking of this specific study. Therefore, this study assessed the impact of transaction costs on spatial price differences of maize in the Njombe District of Tanzania. A semi-structured questionnaire was developed and employed to collect information from maize traders. Also, checklists were used to collect information from market leaders. Both descriptive and quantitative analyses were undertaken. In the descriptive analysis, means and percentages were generated. On the other hand, in the quantitative analyses, the Ravalion model which is based on the co-movement of prices, was modified to fit the study in question and estimated. The outputs generated from the modified model were used for inferences. The estimated model results showed that transaction costs (transportation costs, years of schooling, bribery, and the number of maize bags carried in one trip) have significant effects on spatial price differences. Moreover, market leaders revealed that because of the poor quality of the roads, individual farmers find it challenging to deliver their produce to the Njombe market. Consequently, they obtain a low price when they sell their produce at the farm level. The study recommends deliberate measures to reduce transaction costs, such as improving urban and rural infrastructure, simplifying bureaucratic procedures that provide room for corruption, and, finally, promoting large-scale production or collective actions to reduce transaction costs. Key words: Spatial price differences, transaction costs, markets, maize, farmers, traders

‘Don’t you want us to eat?’: the moral economy of a Ugandan marketplace

Marketplaces have long provided a context for observing the negotiation of everyday life amid broader processes of social and economic transformation. A growing scholarship has debated the relationship between markets and capitalist modes of production in Africa. However, less attention has been paid to the changing moral dimensions of economic life within popular urban marketplaces. This article examines the moral economy of a central marketplace in Kampala, Uganda, through an analysis of a rare archive: the records of the market disciplinary committee. We show that market vendors have responded to the expansion of market economy in Kampala by invoking principles derived from the past, including the obligation to ‘feed’ others. Rather than an abstracted market economy, disputes in the market were interpreted in the context of an embedded market society in which value is placed on livelihood facilitation. These findings advance the burgeoning literature on capitalism in Africa by demonstrating the ways in which neoliberal norms and values are situated within a broader moral landscape that places limits on what can be exchanged with whom.

Precarity and indeterminacy in a prized forest mushroom: traditional practice to frenzied urban marketplaces in Northern Thailand

Across Northern Thailand, het thop mushrooms (Astraeus) are foraged and sold into an increasingly commodified marketplace. A species of wild fungi that only appears for a short time each year, it is widely enjoyed across the diverse range of communities living in the region and increasingly positioned as part of the Lanna food and cultural aesthetic. Through a rapid rise in price over recent decades and the subsequent forging of supply chains linking rural communities to urban and online markets, foraging practices now provide significant seasonal incomes and form an essential part of annual livelihoods. However, as this paper contends – working closely with the analytical framing of “precarity” put forth by Tsing (2015) in a similar fungal context – there are forms of precariousness and uncertainty that are inherent in wild products, from the indeterminant ecologies from which it emerges, to the unreliable livelihoods that arise from it, and the fickle market for such products. The purpose is not to dismiss this market as frivolous or problematic, but rather to suggest that in a disturbed and distorted environmental and economic context such as Northern Thailand, this is indicative of a wider shift toward a “salvage economy.”

Middle-ranking household food acquisition: the impact of marketplaces on purchasing patterns and networks of supply in eighteenth-century Bristol and Boston

ABSTRACT Studies of consumption have historically focused on the ways early modern consumers acquired fashionable and novel goods. More recently, the focus has shifted towards the consumption of everyday commodities by rural households. This study addresses the most central component of household consumption, food, and assesses the impact of urban marketplaces on its acquisition. Using a comparative analysis of food provision for middle-ranking households in Bristol and Boston, 1734-1742, it highlights the complexity and range of considerations required to ensure regular, fresh supplies of food. This study demonstrates that, despite the greater prevalence of advertising and conventional retailing in the food marketplace in Boston, factors peculiar to food provision, such as perishability and authenticity, meant both households continued to acquire this essential commodity through trusted, local, often familial, suppliers.

Fire risk communication in the urban informal sector: Evidence from traditional marketplaces in Accra, Ghana

AbstractUrban marketplace fires in Ghana are chronic, devasting in economic losses and disproportionately impacting informal sector workers. Yet, the scholarly works on urban disasters have focused on hydrometeorological and other man‐made disasters to the neglect of marketplace fires, particularly the challenges in risk communication between emergency management agencies and urban marketplace workers. In seeking to extend the emerging but scant work on urban marketplace fires in Ghana, this paper analysed fire risk communication to understand how socio‐cultural factors influence the perceptions and protective behavioral strategies of traders in two traditional urban marketplaces of Accra. In‐depth interviews with both public agencies and traders showed that traders’ social networks and interactions are important sources and channels for fire risk communication, albeit unharnessed by formal emergency management agencies. It also revealed how cultural elements such as religious beliefs about fire risks affect proactiveness in fire risk preparedness and response. To ensure effective risk communication about marketplace fires, this paper calls attention to and mainstreaming of socio‐cultural aspects of everyday life in marketplaces into disaster risk planning and management.

“American rice is cleaner”: marketplace hybridity and the cultural transformation of food in the Dominican Republic

PurposeThe article offers a study of the central food marketplace in Santiago, Dominican Republic. The purpose of the study is to explore how changes in the marketplace reflect transformation of urban food systems resulting from neoliberal restructuring during the final decades of the twentieth century.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on long-term qualitative research conducted during the late 1990s and early 2000s, including ethnographic and survey methods, the article illustrates how central urban marketplaces offer a window into transitions in both international and domestic food economies.FindingsResearch findings illustrate that the marketplace in Santiago operated in a state of economic hybridity, intermixing long established regionally produced domestic crops such as yuca, plantains and pigeon peas deeply rooted in Dominican agrarian culture with products dervived from liberalization of the Dominican economy such as imported rice, beans and eventually numerous Dominican food staples.Research limitations/implicationsThe study is limited by the scope of analysis which is one urban marketplace. More sites for researching marketplaces could be added for more comparative analysis.Practical implicationsThe research findings have implications for how governments define social and economic policy that impacts domestic food producers and intermediary brokers that aggregate and debulk food to feed cities.Originality/valueThe scholarship raises questions about how the social and economic organization of urban marketplaces in the Dominican Republic and elsewhere reflect historical transitions in local, national and global economies.

The Relationship between CSR and CBBE in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Moderating Role of Customer Perceived Value

ABSTRACT Relying on the concepts of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and consumer-based brand equity (CBBE) to better understand sub-Saharan African urban marketplaces, this article puts forward a conceptual framework whose objective is to a) investigate the effect of CSR on multiple dimensions of CBBE and b) investigate the moderating role of customer perceived value (CPV). Survey data are from 501 consumers in Ghana and are analyzed using structural equation modeling. Findings suggest that engaging in CSR unquestionably improves all aspects of brand equity such as brand awareness, brand image, brand quality, and brand loyalty. We also find that the relationship between CSR and CBBE is moderated by CPV across all CSR-CBBE relationship. These findings have important implications for CSR, branding, international business and marketing in the Ghanaian marketplace.

Wild Edible Plants of Nutritional and Medicinal Significance to the Tribes of Palghar, Maharashtra, India

Wild edible plants (WEP) are an important component from the perspective of tribal diet. There are various traditional practices and beliefs in relation to the use of wild edibles among various tribal communities in Maharashtra. In this study, the WEP found in Jawhar block of Palghar district and detailed information on the local usage for medicine or food purpose has been documented. With this, the traditional methods of preparation, collection and storage of these edible wild plants has also been documented. The present paper presents a total of 162 species of WEP, out of which almost 74% are consumed as food, 14% possess medicinal significance while 12% of the species exhibit both dietary and medicinal significance. This type of study could contribute in recording the traditional heritage of food culture and generate awareness about the importance of wild edible species. Documentation of these wild plant species can help in commercialization and domestication of the wild varieties and their entry into urban marketplaces to generate higher revenue for the farmers. Wild edibles could prove to be a remedy to food scarcity, a source of nutritional security and improve the economy in tribal areas.

The Social Organization of Merchants’ Activities. An Interactionist Study of Urban Marketplaces

The article briefly presents the empirical results of a large research project focused on Polish urban marketplaces, commonly known as bazaars, and their interactional order. Due to the spatial separation and legal regulations concerning bazaar trade, a relatively constant community of market vendors is created in the area of the particular marketplace. The primary activity of each merchant is to offer and sell goods; however, the specificity of marketplace trade results in the necessity to maintain relationships with other vendors to keep this primary activity going. Thus, the activities of merchants are carried out in the same direction for both economic results and performance (sales and profit) and social action, that is, building and managing relations with vendors operating in the same marketplace. A wide range of activities and interaction strategies is developed that create an order of interactions between vendors, both in terms of perceiving and assigning meanings, interpreting, and taking actions. The consequences of such an interactional foundation affect the economic layer of the market, embedding, on the one hand, economic phenomena in social phenomena, and, on the other hand, generating paradoxes of prices and competition—the two economic concepts that cannot be analyzed without their social contexts.

Exploring the Socio-Economic Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic in Marketplaces in Urban Ghana

This article explores Ghana’s preventive measures for stemming the spread of the COVID-19 disease among its population and the socio-economic impact of these measures in urban marketplaces. It argues that Ghana’s COVID-19 approach in marketplaces was characterised by (1) improving hygiene conditions through disinfection of all markets, (2) closing down markets to enforce social distancing among traders, and (3) imposing a lockdown to decongest densely populated marketplaces. Yet the micro-geographies of Ghana’s marketplaces complicated the implementation of these preventive measures. The socio-economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in marketplaces were evident in the increased food prices, the economic hardships associated with the lockdown directive, and the forceful relocation and decongestion exercises to enforce social distancing among traders. The hostile nature with which municipal authorities implemented the COVID-19 preventive measures in marketplaces is akin to how they sought to decongest inner cities prior to the emergence of COVID-19.

AMBON DI BAWAH ORDE BARU: TRANSFORMASI KAPITALISME PADA MASYARAKAT PINGGIRAN

ABSTRACT:
 
 Using the approach of Karl Polanyi (2014), this paper studies three great transformation take place in Ambon Island during the 1970s t0 1990s. Those transformation are on land, money and transportation. Money transforms local people to acquaint with the price system. On the other hand, the needs of consumption increase when money is introduced. Using money, local Moluccans can send their children to the higher school as well as allocate to buy more machinery works. The machinization also accelerates rural people to work faster and more efficient. The questions from this paper is who are the people who bring all of these social and economic transformations? The author found that the coming of voluntary migrants from Sulawesi, Java, and Padangese any other Island in Indonesia play significant role to change the Moluccan system economic and social systems. These migrants dominate exchanges from the production level in the orchards to the rural and urban marketplaces. They play both as traders and middlemen. The Butonese, migrants from Sulawesi, are the most significant suppliers and middlemen that bring rural commodities to sell to the Chinese Moluccan in the city. Chinese Moluccan mostly are shop owners who do not have a direct in touch with the local Moluccan landowners in the rural areas. They also play a role as moneylender for Butonese to buy cloves and nutmeg from the rural areas. Therefore, it is Butonese that have direct contact with the rural Moluccans. Despite the authoritarian regime of the New Order, in the economic field, the State tend to let people to constitute their own business, before finally in the mid of 1990s, The Clove Support and Trading Board (BPPC) under the authority of Tommy Suharto, the son of Indonesian President, took over the business by monopolize the clove trade system. 
 Keywords: Economic Transformation, ethnic economy, exchanges, middlemen, monetization.

Migrant Traders in the Marketplaces (Pasar) and their Domination in the Post-conflict Society of the Moluccas Province, Indonesia

This article is about the domination of Butonese migrant traders in three urban marketplaces (pasar) of Ambon in the aftermath of sectarian conflict. The research examines how Butonese migrant traders struggle for their sovereign space and how they deal with the dissatisfied local traders in light of their domination in the market. The Butonese migrant traders also demonstrate an uncanny ability in political lobbying and creating businesses based on family networking. At the horizontal level, they construct their emotional connections and minimalise local people’s jealousy over their dominance in the market by reinventing local ceremonies in the marketplace, while at the vertical level, the Butonese traders create credit access and political contacts with the central government in Jakarta and with local legislators—most of whom belong to Islamic parties. The market has become a space for leveling-up the migrant trader’s self-esteem since, outside the market, local people (orang negeri) question their citizenship status.

REVEALING URBAN MARKETPLACE IDENTITY: PUDU

The process of regenerating existing urban marketplaces should consider the components that make them special, as not to lose the delicate characters that give each marketplace distinctive identity and sense of place. This study focuses on identifying and evaluating urban marketplace by reviewing the definitions and concept of physical characters, and the experiential qualities of urban marketplace in Kuala Lumpur that contribute to the identity of a place. This study discovered that the marketplace physical surrounding and the activities that are happening are two of the elements which are associated with the place’s identity. This study concludes that urban marketplace physical and experiential quality can be regenerated to reveal an identity with strong sense of place.

REVEALING URBAN MARKETPLACE IDENTITY: PUDU

The process of regenerating existing urban marketplaces should consider the components that make them special, as not to lose the delicate characters that give each marketplace distinctive identity and sense of place. This study focuses on identifying and evaluating urban marketplace by reviewing the definitions and concept of physical characters, and the experiential qualities of urban marketplace in Kuala Lumpur that contribute to the identity of a place. This study discovered that the marketplace physical surrounding and the activities that are happening are two of the elements which are associated with the place’s identity. This study concludes that urban marketplace physical and experiential quality can be regenerated to reveal an identity with strong sense of place.

Showing ‘heart’ while making money: negotiating proximity in a Ugandan marketplace

AbstractAfrican marketplaces have long been understood as ambivalent spaces; as sites of compliance and transgression, domination and resistance. This ambivalence comes into sharp focus in the urban marketplaces that have absorbed a large proportion of the African workforce over the past four decades. One the one hand, urban markets offer opportunities for the forging of new relationships, or ‘fictive kin’, beyond the confines of consanguinity and affinity. However, on the other hand, they are fiercely competitive places in which strangers skilfully intrude into one's life. Succeeding in the market therefore requires the striking of a skilful balance between accumulation and redistribution, disclosure and concealment. This article presents an analysis of the everyday interactions and exchanges facilitated by the movements of a waste picker in Nakasero market, the oldest marketplace in Kampala, Uganda. Amid the current emphasis on improvization and provisionality as key features of urban African life, it demonstrates the importance of long-standing cultural idioms, such asomutima(‘heart’), in providing structure and meaning to the interactions of urban African inhabitants.

An Orientation Towards Urban Culture: The Place of Market Vendor Folklore in the Urban Culture of Trabzon

Urban history, urban architecture, urban archeology and art history have been among the subjects that were given priority in urban cultural studies focusing on Turkey. Cultural creation and transmission groups and environments that are essential components of urban folklore have not been given the same priority. It is an obvious fact that all components of urban identity and city dwellers need to be taken account in general urban culture studies. As important as tangible urban cultural components, the everyday lives social groups, production and marketing methods, partly ritualistic practices, informal rules, memorial and shared spaces, jargons and secret codes, beliefs and nicknames should be evaluated in a holistic perspective. The urban studies in Western and Northern Europe and in North America have been taking these issues into account in meticulous ways. The urban marketplaces provide venues as cultural scenes in urban landscapes where colorful practices come into being with active participation of various social classes and groups that are the agents of urban culture. This study subjects the cultural memory of market vendors and their folk practices in Trabzon. Trabzon is one of the most important urban centers of Eastern Black Sea region where oral culture is peculiar. The marketplaces and vendors of Trabzon have kept their continuity in harmony with the rapidly changing socio-cultural and socio-economic structure. The folk elements, which were created and practiced by the market vendors in their professional lives were recorded by observation and interviews during field study and evaluated in their relation with and impact upon the urban culture. It was concluded that the marketplaces, which have been among the dynamic venues of the urban culture continue to represent the occupational rules, beliefs, communication techniques, behavior patterns and jargons in a rich content.

Politics of the Hinterland: Taxing Fowl in and beyond the Ports of Terceira Island, 1550–1600

In standard treatments of the political economy of port cities, ports are seen to play key roles as centers of mediation between hinterlands and the maritime sphere. This article lends nuance to this framework through a case study of Terceira Island in the Azores and the ways in which merchants, city officials, and Catholic confraternity members in the latter sixteenth century attempted to regulate the harvesting and commerce of birds across the rural districts and urban marketplaces of the island. By seeking to implement complex tax arrangements through lengthy negotiations, provisional accords, and outright conflict, individuals claiming the right to oversee the procurement and trade of wild and domesticated fowl engaged in a palpable politics of the hinterland. I argue that struggles over the types of birds that could be found, exchanged, and consumed throughout Terceira responded to the social, political, and ecological dynamism of the hinterlands in ways that were not always connected to developments in the ports but were sometimes nevertheless enmeshed in broader Atlantic transformations.

Does Police Repression Increase Cooperation between Migrants? A Study of Informal Urban Marketplaces in India

Heightened police repression is an important feature of urban life for poor migrants in the developing world. Yet little is known about how police repression shapes patterns of cooperation and conflict within these proliferating urban communities. I address this question by combining 5 months of ethnographic fieldwork with an original large-scale survey experiment conducted among poor migrants (N=2400) in urban India. Far from fracturing poor migrant communities, I find repression increases rates of political and economic cooperation within them. These solidarity effects stem from both empathy and self-interest, and are rooted in shared experiences of repression. Strikingly, they can even extend across inter-migrant economic and ethnic rivalries. My findings reveal repression to be a novel and neglected pathway of migrant identity formation in the developing world. More broadly, this study extends research on how repression shapes mass protest to consider how it impacts everyday relations between frequently repressed citizens.

Introduction: markets in modernization: transformations in urban market space and practice,c. 1800 –c. 1970

This special issue addresses the changing role and later history of physical, face-to-face markets for goods, which in modern cities all over the world are mainly or wholly used by individuals and families for consumption purposes. Our focus is on the urban market as a specific urban place and its shifting relationship with important alterations in the governance, society and economy of modern, industrial cities (untilc. 1970). The main intention of this collection is to move beyond traditional (western) views of the so-called ‘decline’ of these urban marketplaces. In the history and theorization of the type of cities that came into being all over the world in the wake of economic and political transformations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ‘markets’ are usually thought of in terms of their institutional meaning. They are referred to as abstract notions of commerce and exchange, be it in commodities, labour, cash or shares. Seldom are they studied as real, physical marketplaces within cities; as entities that take up space; function in changing production and distribution chains and evolve as a result of changes in wholesaling, retailing, consumption and the political regulation of urban space, society and economy. Indeed, it is often argued that ‘marketplaces’ in this spatially delimited and concrete sense ceased to be of importance once modernization took hold of urban landscapes all over the world. That this is not the case is amply demonstrated by the articles gathered here: markets continued to be vibrant parts of a wide variety of towns and cities across the globe.

Competition among pharmacies and the typology of services delivered: The Portuguese case

ObjectiveTo analyze the impact of individual and market characteristics (such as competition) on the typology of services delivered by a community pharmacy after a recent Portuguese pro-competitive regulatory change. MethodsIn this paper, market concentration indices are used to identify market competition groups in the sample. These competition groups are then described with regard to the typology of services on offer by pharmacies within the group. Finally, a system of structural equations is estimated to verify if the decision of a pharmacy to offer or not to offer each of the studied pharmaceutical services is affected by local market regulated competition. ResultsIn some cases, pharmacies belonging to different competition groups do not present significant differences in terms of the typology of services on offer, but according to our regressions, it seems that vaccines and medicines administration services, pharmaceutical care programmes and medicines management programmes are more likely to be offered in pharmacies located in higher competitive markets. These are also urban areas, in which there is already easy access to products sold in pharmacies, and to health services in general. ConclusionsAccess to additional pharmacy services may in some cases increase as market competition increases. Thus, pro-competitive regulatory measures may have led to an asymmetric distribution of pharmacy services across the country, favouring more competitive urban marketplaces. If policy-makers are interested in a more symmetrical distribution of pharmacies services all over the country, they are recommended to take action to ensure equitable access to these services.