Tales of the Unexpected: Exploring Car Boot Sales as Marginal Spaces of Contemporary Consumption |
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Authors: | Louise Crewe Nicky Gregson |
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Affiliation: | Department of Geography, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD e-mail:;Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN e-mail: |
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Abstract: | Marginal and/or resistant consumption practices have been neglected in current geographical debates on consumption and retailing. This has resulted in partial and skewed theorizations of exchange within contemporary consumption. Consumption spaces such as car boot sales represent sites in which the conventions of the marketplace are suspended or abandoned, and replaced by forms of sourcing, commodity circulation, transaction codes, pricing mechanisms and value quite different from those which typify more conventional retail malls and department stores. Drawing on the anthropological literature on traditional and peasant markets, we argue that exchange within the car boot sale is socially, culturally and geographically embedded and we emphasize the intrinsic importance of fun and sociality to such activities. Marginal spaces such as the car boot sale offer both some important clues into the potential for rethinking marketplace dynamics, notably with respect to our understandings of value, and some intriguing possibilities for consumer politics. |
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Keywords: | marginal spaces of consumption car boot sales exchange value commodity circulation |
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