Abstract

Informal markets generate sites of counter-globalisation based on a deterritorialisation of cultures. Many of these markets are hubs of migratory routes whose idiosyncratic complexity reflects the tension between traditional economies, black markets and the new conditions of deregulated and liberalised capital markets. The dynamics of these sites highlight the network character of the radicalised and deregulated f lows of people, capital and goods worldwide. One of the effects this network phenomenon creates is an increased transnationalisation and hybridisation of cultural claims and expressions. In view of growing cultural homogenisation, this brings to the fore one of the most potent traits of informal markets: the sprawl of a myriad of indeterminate parallel worlds existing next to each other or literally within the same place. Along a set of case studies carried out by the EU funded research project, Networked Cultures (www.networkedcultures.org), this text looks at three different informal markets as micro-sites of paradoxical and indeterminate cultural production: Izmailovo Market Moscow, Istanbul Topkapi and Arizona Market BrČko (BaH).

How to Cite:

Mörtenböck, P. & Mooshammer, H., (2007) “Trading Indeterminacy – Informal Markets in Europe”, field: 1(1), 73–87.