Weaving value: Selling carpets in the liminal space of Istanbul's Grand Bazaar |
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| Authors: | PATRICIA SCALCO |
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| Institution: | Social anthropologist and researcher at the University of Helsinki. She has a background in law and conducted her doctoral fieldwork on the intersection of public and private space, moralities and sexual health in Istanbul. She has been an Academy of Finland postdoctoral researcher and is currently a researcher within Crosslocations, an ERC Advanced Grant project at the University of Helsinki led by Sarah Green. |
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| Abstract: | All around the world, places of trade are typically conceived as places of deceit, if not outright danger: the plight of the carpet seller in Istanbul might be likened to that of the used car salesman in the West, for instance. But Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar is a particularly well-known centre of (perceived) deceit – the home of the trickster par excellence – and carpet sellers are the iconic bearers of this reputation. As a threshold of thresholds, the bazaar is a global crossroads, where a huge diversity of cultures and histories intersect, and carpets are objects that express this perhaps the most magnificently. |
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