GENTRIFICATION OF ROMANIAN FARMERSʼ MARKETS AS SOCIAL/POLITICAL AGGRESSION

Abstract

During the ethnographic work on Romanian farmersʼ markets that I have carried out over the last decade, I have noticed many cases of markets hidden/obscured by urban-architectural interventions on their historically consecrated sites. Along with abusive gentrifications, undertaken in the absence of public consultation, I have inscribed these brutal interventions in a series of annoyances brought daily to the inhabitants by the municipality. In the margins of the main field research, which aimed at the sociability and resilience of pre-modern solidarity and mutual aid relationships within the markets, I also made some observations on the symbolic, discursive/propagandistic meaning, imprinted by the municipal power on this type of reconfiguration of the markets and the commercial fords historically generated by them. In this article, I also try to capture certain ideological patterns of these transformations. The conclusion focuses on the violent effects of the gentrification of farmer’s markets on vulnerable age groups, causing social exclusion.