Lived experience in a neighbourhood wet market culture and social memories of a disappearing space 2

Chapter 1. Framing the lived experiences and memories of the marketplace
1.1. Orienting the view: Presenting Bedok Market
This thesis is an ethnography of a neighbourhood wet market in Singapore –
Bedok Market – in which I hope to relate some sense of the varied peoples, activities,
and logics that characterize this space. I deploy a meaning-centred framework
(Wherry, 2012) to shed light on the micro-level culture of Bedok Market: the various
socialities, and performance ingredients that make up what I call the drama of buying
and selling. In this manner, I endeavour to capture the lived qualities of everyday life
for two groups – hawkers and customers.
Many neighbourhood marketplaces have vanished from the Singapore
landscape in the recent years. A torrent of memories has welled up in light of this
disappearance. To gain a feel of the stories that have circulated, I extract the memories
of four categories of people – hawkers, customers, the National Heritage Board (NHB)
staff and their collaborators, and heritage bloggers.1 To some degree, the tales of some
groups conjure up the multifaceted dynamics of the marketplace. Others do not. Thus,
I marry my ethnography with a narrative slant that draws from and builds upon the
micro-level culture of the marketplace.
1.2. Crafting a meaning-centred approach to Bedok Market
My thesis lies at the intersection of economic and cultural sociology; I tap on
concepts from cultural sociology such as sociality, relational work, dramaturgy or
performance, nostalgia, and heritage, to understand economic phenomena and social
memories. In particular, I align myself with Wherry‟s (2012) meaning-centred stance
to marketplaces – a framework that fits well with culturally inflected studies in
economic sociology. Hence, I situate my ethnography of the micro-level culture of
1

„Heritage bloggers‟ refer to people who „share their passion for Singapore‟s past and present‟ by
blogging about issues that relate to Singapore‟s past and „heritage‟ (NHB, 2012a).

1

Bedok Market within the sociology of culture realm in the field of economic
sociology, and within studies in social memory.
A meaning-centred approach operates along several logics. It comprehends
marketplaces as „cultural intentions‟, meaning that „people…share loose
understandings about how they should survive…[and] exchange, and what is
appropriate for exchange‟ (ibid.:3). Marketplaces are „cultural intentions that are
inculcated and enacted, and intentions that their audiences must absorb‟ (ibid.).
Contrary to what neoclassical economists believe, marketplaces are not technical,
efficient responses to a natural environment driven by principles of scarcity, demand,
and supply (ibid.).
A cultural understanding of marketplace logics and more broadly, economic
action, facilitates an exploration of marketplaces that looks at „what people actually
do‟ in them – the meanings or cultural intentions that actors affix to their behaviours.
These meanings are inseparable from people‟s actions, relationships, negotiations, and
struggles (ibid.:121). Therefore, a meaning-centred approach concerns itself with „the
meanings of economic action....[and] money, dramaturgical performances within
market encounters, and categories that order economic behaviour‟ (ibid.:126).
Because I don this lens, I am interested in meaningful socialities and relational work
(Chapter 3), performances (Chapter 4), and narratives (Chapter 5) in and of Bedok
Market.
In addition, a meaning-centred stance views economic actors as pragmatic,
emotional, and habitual creatures (ibid.:130). Unlike what neoclassical economists
hold, rationality and utility are but two of the many cultural orientations that
individuals exhibit (ibid.). Actors in Bedok Market have multiple goals behind their
(economic) actions. Some are material and economically oriented; others are symbolic

2

and ideational. Actors may disavow some goals to fulfil others (ibid.:131). To achieve
their many goals, individuals employ meaningful strategies that are substantive,
temporally ordered, and meaningfully instrumental (ibid.); goals are accomplished in
ways that make sense to people. Furthermore, a meaning-centred approach sees the
marketplace as a social space and a dramaturgical stage on which actors adopt roles,
perform, and interact with audiences. I probe into these conceptions of the space in
Chapter 3 and 4 respectively.
Since I engage a meaning-centred framework to explore the micro-level
culture of Bedok Market, a definition of „culture‟ and „marketplace‟ is imperative. By
„micro-level culture‟, I refer to the lived, subjective and multifarious qualities, logics
or rhythms that compose the milieu of Bedok Market. Marketplace socialities and the
theatre of buying and selling are two aspects of these realities. These ethnographic
characteristics are socially constituted. A sense of „social cognition‟ (DiMaggio,
1990:113) is embedded in marketplace culture. There exists a shared sense of how the
social world is ordered, even before individuals enter the space (Wherry, 2012:7).
Moreover, actors experience this world through categories of what can be grouped
together, and what must be separated. In the marketplace, culture demarcates
boundaries which are often taken-for-granted (ibid.:8). More vitally, when I speak
about the „micro-level culture of Bedok Market‟, I invoke an interpretative lens
through which actors perceive their social world and their place in it. Culture
embodies a set of principles about how individuals should behave, and the meanings
of these behaviours in a particular space (ibid.:9). People act explicitly or implicitly
within a pre-established structure of cultural norms. They often use their agency to
selectively draw from these norms to gain power in negotiating their own positions or

3


altering the norms. In this manner, cultural norms in the marketplace frame but do not
dictate ways of acting.

Neoclassical economists use the term „market‟ to refer abstractly to exchange
that revolves around the laws of price, demand, and supply (Bestor, 2001:9227).
„Markets‟ are „networks of economic processes and transactions…which occur
without specific locations or spatial boundaries for the transactional universe‟ (ibid.). I
do not view Bedok Market as a „market‟ in this sense. Rather, Bedok Market is a
„marketplace‟ – a space that encapsulates „a localized set of social institutions, social
actors, property rights, products, transactional relationships, trade practices, and
cultural meanings framed by a wide variety of factors including, but not limited to,
“purely economic” or “market” forces‟ (ibid.). „Marketplaces‟ are ethnographic sites
or
Specific locations and social frameworks characterized not only by economic
exchanges in and among them, but also by their equally vital roles as arenas
for cultural activity and political expression, nodes in flows of information,
landmarks of historical and ritual significance, and centres of civic
participation where diverse social, economic, ethnic, and cultural groups
combine, collide, cooperate, collude, compete, and clash. (ibid.)

In short, a meaning-centred angle underscores that marketplaces are embedded
in ongoing patterns of social organization and cultural meaning (Polanyi et al., 1957;
Granovetter, 1985), since economic behaviour is interwoven with a myriad of social
and cultural behaviours, institutions, and beliefs (Bestor, 2001:9227).
There are many marketplaces that fit Bestor‟s (2001) definition. Tangires
(2008) and Spitzer et al. (1995) utilize the term „public market‟ to encompass the
numerous marketplaces possible: open-air markets, street markets, market sheds,
wholesale markets and so on. In Singapore, wet markets are „public markets‟ in three
ways. They are spaces where diverse peoples buy and sell products under the purview

4

of a common authority – the National Environment Agency (NEA)2 or private
enterprises. There are public goals or purposes to marketplace activities – the
provision of affordable retailing opportunities to small businesses, and shopping
facilities in the neighbourhood precinct. Wet markets are located in public spaces in
the community, and are supposed to serve as places where people mingle (Spitzer et
al., 1995:2-3).
The term „wet market‟ stems from the wet floors in the space. These are
caused by melting ice that is used to keep foods fresh, and hawkers who wash their
stalls to rid them of the blood, waste, and dirt that come with slaughtering and
cleaning live or fresh animals and foods. In Singapore, marketplaces are segmented
into a wet section where fresh foods – pork, chicken, beef, (roast) duck, seafood, and
live animals – are retailed, and a dry section of spices, rice, dried noodles and seafood,
eggs, fruits, and clothes. Marketplaces are thought to be noisy and smelly. They are
open everyday except Mondays, from the wee hours of the morning to noon.
1.3. Why an ethnography of a neighbourhood marketplace?
Venkatesh et al. (2006:252) bemoan that the terms „market‟, „consumption‟,
and „culture‟ are „everywhere but nowhere in our literature‟ on marketplaces, where
this literature runs the gamut from economics, business and marketing, political
science, sociology to anthropology. Geiger et al. (2012:134-136) underline that
market(place)s are amenable to cross-disciplinary and cross-area investigation. They
make a commendable effort to consolidate the various approaches, and craft a crossdisciplinary vocabulary that enables discussion without flattening the differences

2

The National Environment Agency (NEA) is „the leading public organization responsible for
improving and sustaining a clean and green environment in Singapore‟
( NEA develops environmental
initiatives and programmes through its partnership with the public and private sectors (ibid.). NEA has
several key programmes, and the management of hawker centres and wet markets constitutes one of
these programmes (ibid.).

5


across academic traditions. Their conceptual map evinces many theoretical
perspectives on market(place)s. Three of these perspectives – neoclassical economics,
the substantivist school of thought, and social networks theory – have dominated the
field of economic sociology. I will here assess the features, strengths and weaknesses
of these paradigms, and communicate the importance of a meaning-centred
framework.
Neoclassical economists erect a dichotomy between the market and civic life;
economic life and action are antagonistic to social life (Cook, 2008:1). In fact, culture
and the economy are taken to be macro entities that operate as separate externalities
(ibid.:2). Economic life is captured in Bestor‟s (2001) aforementioned definition of
the „market‟; the market delinks buyers, sellers and products from one another, and
extracts exchange processes from a sense of place (Cook, 2008:2). Therefore,
neoclassical economists endorse an ideal model of the market that is divorced from
material and social constraints; they claim to be „culture-free‟. They celebrate a
powerful figure of the rational economic man who is isolated and anonymous –
epitomic of homo economicus and methodological individualism (Shepherd, 2008) –
rational and capitalist.
In the neoclassical economic perspective, the market is a price mechanism for
price formation involving utilitarian, atomistic buyers and sellers with stable
preferences and perfect information, and tends towards equilibrium (Geiger et al.,
2012:137). Finally, the model reeks of economic imperialism or colonialism;
neoclassical economists purport to be able to explain all social relations and matters
via the work of an all-powerful market system. Their model of „The Market‟ is not
only abstract, but normative and hegemonic.

6

Recent developments in the field reveal that neoclassical economists have
embraced new ideas and debates. The concepts of „social capital‟, „social trust‟ as a
foundation for cooperation among firms, and „cultural economy‟, have become key
themes in the study of economic life. Nonetheless, criticisms of neoclassical
economics abound. Frank (2000) warns that the market arises as a sort of „supraintelligence‟ or „deity‟ that systematically structures economic and social life
according to „an unbending…[and] unerring calculus of value‟ (cited in Cook, 2008:1).
The division between the economy and culture leaves no room wherein culture,
meaning, sentiment, and everyday practice bear upon social life (Cook, 2008:2).
Furthermore, Shepherd (2008:13) highlights that neoclassical economics is a model
occupied with aggregates and not individuals, and thus projects how people should
behave, not what they actually do (ibid.). Consequently, the „real‟ is simply assumed
to conform to the „normative‟ (ibid.).
Market exchange is detached from social, cultural, and historical contexts, and
is assumed to operate uniformly everywhere. The removal of place and history from
specific contexts deprives neoclassical economists of any ability to speak of social
realities in the lived here and now (ibid.:14-15). Neoclassical economists also forget
that market exchange is a social tie of a certain kind. Exchange that transpires between
impersonal partners is a social relationship because „the neutralization of actors‟
identities is the properly social condition for market exchange‟ (La Pradelle, 2006:6).
Certainly, methodological individualism is a culturally produced way of being
(Shepherd, 2008:17).
The most trenchant critique of neoclassical economics springs from the
substantivist tradition in economic sociology. The substantive meaning of economic
has come to be associated with the works of Karl Polanyi and his followers (George

7

Dalton and Marshall Sahlins, for example), and is a creation of Polanyi himself
(Polanyi et al., 1957). It designates a perspective that Polanyi formulated in The great
transformation: The political and economic origin of our times (1944), and Trade and
market in the early empires: Economies in history and theory (1957). In these seminal
texts, Polanyi challenges the formal meaning of economic that runs on the logic of
rational decision-making and choice in the allocation of scarce resources to alternative
ends (Polanyi et al., 1957:243). He advocates a substantive understanding of economic
that interrogates the material acts of making of a living, and the ways through which
humans adapt to the social and natural environment (ibid.).
Polanyi proceeds to investigate the place of the substantive economy in
different kinds of societies. How is the economy „instituted‟ or integrated into wider
society and stabilized (Prattis, 1987:16)? What are the processes that bind the social
and economic in various societies (Wilk, 1996:7)? Polanyi et al. (1957:148) assert that
economic action and institutions are embedded and enmeshed in institutions, both
economic and noneconomic. In this sense, substantivists lean towards social
economics (Wilk, 1996:8). They are interested in economic institutions, social groups
that produce, exchange and consume goods, and they assume that such groups abide
by the rules of these institutions (ibid.).
In addition, Polanyi takes a historical and comparative approach to the analysis
of „the economy as an instituted process‟ (Lie, 1991:221). In his comparative analysis,
Polanyi (1977:35) develops a typology of exchange relations or „forms of
integration‟ – patterns of integration that bring out the institutionalized movements
through which elements of the economic process (material resources and labour,
transportation, storage, and the distribution of goods) are connected.

8


There are three kinds of exchange relations. Reciprocal exchanges occur
because the values and norms of a social group or society prescribe that individuals

have reciprocal obligations to one another by virtue of their statuses. Thus, families,
clans, tribes, friends or communities give and receive goods in traditionally patterned
manners (Barber, 1995:396). Redistributive exchanges are propelled by norms that
require members of a collective to contribute taxes, goods or services to a central
authority. This agency either allocates these contributions to some common enterprise
of the collective, or returns them in different proportions to the original donors
(ibid.:398). Market exchanges are the very transactions that neoclassical economists
and formalists study. They exist where norms dictate that economic actors behave like
homo economius (ibid.). Polanyi (1944:46) states that reciprocity and redistribution
are inextricably embedded in social relations, and are present in pre-market and
substantive economies. On the contrary, market exchange and societies are
disembedded from social relations (Polanyi et al., 1957).
Renowned social network theorist, Mark Granovetter, builds on Polanyi‟s
(1944; 1957) concept of „embeddedness‟. His highly influential piece, Economic
action and social structure: The problem of embeddnedness (1985), critiques the
„undersocialized‟ actor of neoclassical economics and the „oversocialized‟ actor of
classical structural sociology (ibid.:482-483). Granovetter (1985) argues that these
approaches see actions and decisions as executed by atomized individuals who are
disembedded from social contexts (ibid.:484), glossing over the „historical and
structural embeddedness of relations‟ (ibid.:485). Swedberg and Granovetter (2001)
throw light on the limitations of apprehending economic phenomena through
methodological individualism: individuals are never solitary but are frequently in
contact with other individuals and groups (ibid.:11). Born into a pre-ordered social

9


world, a complex social structure has always been in existence, and has evolved
through history (ibid.). Most significantly, individual motives cannot account
adequately for social facts and structures; these can only be explained through wider

social forces (ibid.).
In the 1980s, in response to Granovetter‟s (1985) critique, a cultural approach
in economic sociology gained strength with the new economic sociology of Richard
Swedberg, Mark Granovetter, Neil Smelser, Harrison White, and Viviana Zelizer,
broadening the academic debate about the economy to incorporate a social perspective,
and account for the interactions of real people (Swedberg and Granovetter, 2001:1).
Network theorists propose that structural economic sociology is grounded in three
interrelated principles: 1) economic action is a form of social action; 2) economic
action is socially situated or embedded; and 3) economic institutions are social
constructions (Swedberg and Granovetter, 2001:8).
Economic action is social behaviour that is steered by a desire for utility (ibid.),
and meaning structures – the viewpoints and definitions that actors have of a
situation – are central in understanding economic action as a category of social action.
This preposition of economic sociology considers the social context, structures, and
institutions in which economic action transpires (ibid.:9-10).
Economic life is not merely the product of individual self-interest, and
economic systems are not simply the aggregation of self-interest into an optimal
condition of collective rationality that maximizes individual advantages (Bestor,
2004:14). Alternatively, network theorists purport that economic action is embedded
in ongoing networks, structures, and organizations of personal relationships, where
networks comprise regular social contacts or connections among people or groups
(ibid.:11). Moreover, Granovetter (1985:486-487) proposes that networks can produce

10


trust and prevent malfeasance in economic life. Social relationships can generate fraud
and conflict as well (ibid.:488-489), where the extent of disorder depends on how the
networks of relationships are structured (ibid.:489;497). The strength – or weakness –
of personal ties influences economic phenomena, and network theorists differentiate

between embedded and arm‟s-length or disembedded ties3 (Zelizer, 2012:148).
The notion that economic institutions are socially constructed suggests that
institutions which generate economic activity are not solely the outcome of economic
processes (Bestor, 2004:14). Rather, individual actors and institutions create economic
systems out of gradual accumulations of social knowledge and practice that, over time,
appear natural and powerful in how they organize people‟s actions and attitudes (La
Pradelle, 1995 cited in Bestor, 2004:14).
Bestor‟s (2004) delightful book, Tsukiji: The fish market at the centre of the
world, utilizes a cultural perspective to understand social and economic institutions,
processes, and life in Tsukiji – the world‟s largest marketplace for seafood that is
based in Japan. Bestor‟s (2004) work demonstrates Swedberg and Granovetter‟s (2001)
three propositions splendidly. It is an ethnography of trade and economic institutions
as they are embedded in and moulded by social and cultural currents in Japanese life
(Bestor, 2004:xvi); the book explores how complex institutional structures are affixed
to and influenced by specific cultural meanings (ibid.:xvii). Because Tsukiji
exemplifies the institutional frameworks of Japanese economic behaviour and
organization (ibid.:12), Bestor (2004:xviii) also delves into the social networks and
structures that organize the marketplace. These include the structure of auctions in
Tsukiji, and the roles of auction houses, auctioneers and traders; the dynamics of
family firms; and the social structures and relations that drive traders‟ activities (ibid.).
3

Granovetter (1990; 1992) distinguishes between the immediate social connections that an actor has
with others, and more distant associations. He uses the notion of „relational embeddedness‟ to refer to
strong and embedded networks, and „structural embeddedness‟ to invoke weak ties.

11


Most crucially, Tsukiji acts as a broader case study of institutional structures

and the social and cultural embeddedness of economic life (ibid.:12). This is in line
with Bestor‟s (2004:12) desire to engage in an anthropological analysis of institutions;
the documentation of Tsukiji is also an examination of the operations of institutions
that shape complex, urban societies. To execute such an analysis, Bestor (2004)
borrows from Swedberg and Granovetter‟s (2001) third preposition. He starts with the
premise that organizational patterns, institutional arrangements, and the cultural
principles that such patterns reproduce, set up frameworks for marketplace activity
(Bestor, 2004:12). The marketplace is cast both as a particular set of bounded
interactions among actors, and as economic process per se (ibid.:15). In short, the
economic life of Tsukiji is embedded in an institutional structure which is in turn,
influenced by historical and cultural meanings that marketplace participants hold
(ibid.:16).
However, social network research has come under fire in recent years.
According to critics, a theory that distinguishes degrees of (dis)embeddedness
reproduces the neoclassical economics dichotomy of a „social‟ and an „asocial‟,
representing an economic sphere that runs solely on economic logic (Block, 2012:139;
Zelizer, 2012:148; Bandelj, 2012:191). Krippner (2001:800) accuses embeddedness
theorists of „residual economism‟, abandoning hard core market transactions, and thus
seeing the marketplace as existing apart from society, even as they labour to
deconstruct this boundary (Zelizer, 2012:148; Bandelj, 2012:192). Because
embeddedness invokes a social container within which economic processes – not fully
thought of as being socially constituted – pan out, social relationships influence the
economy from the outside (Krippner and Alvarez, 2007:232). Embeddedness research
veers towards meso-level organizational phenomena and an „anti-categorical

12


imperative‟ (Emirbayer and Goodwin, 1994:1414), since it focuses on the structure of
relationships – the strength of ties, degree of centrality and autonomy of the actors‟

network positions, or density of the actors‟ networks.
By stressing meso-level phenomena and the structure of ties, embeddedness
theorists slight, therefore, the contents of these relationships. What exactly composes
the economic activity described as „embedded‟ in social bonds and structures (Zelizer,
2012:147)? Can relationality only be comprehended as a „system of social relations
congealed into networks‟ (Bandelj, 2012:177)? Zelizer, through her concept of
„relational work‟ (2005), attempts to apprehend relationality in economic life as a
process rather than a structure, and thus valuing the attributes and motives that induce
social action at the micro-level.4
Zelizer (2005) develops the notion of „relational work‟ as an alternative to the
„hostile worlds‟ perspective, which asserts that economic activity and intimate ties
belong to distinct arenas (ibid.:20), and have rigid moral boundaries (ibid.:22). Zelizer
(2005) problematizes this perspective by arguing that a real separation between the
economy and culture does not exist. The two arenas are „connected worlds‟ or involve
„connected lives‟, since intimate and economic realms commingle and coexist.
„Relational work‟ is about working across „different boundaries that distinguish
categories of relations and designate certain sorts of economic transactions as
appropriate for that relation, bar other transactions as inappropriate, and adopt certain
media for reckoning and facilitating economic transactions within that relation‟
(ibid.:35). During relational work, individuals form viable matches among a particular
set of distinctive social ties, economic transactions (e.g. compensation, loans, bribes,
theft, gifts), exchange media (e.g. concrete objects, time, favours), and negotiated
4

The notion of relational work was created by Charles Tilly and Viviana Zelizer, and is most
extensively elaborated in Zelizer‟s (2005) The purchase of intimacy, and a special issue of Politics &
Society (Block, 2012).

13

meanings (participants‟ negotiated or contested understandings and moral evaluations)
(Zelizer, 2012:151).
Relational work theorists take meaningful, negotiated, and dynamic
interpersonal transactions as the starting point for social processes, focussing on the
content of social ties and foregrounding the messiness, ambiguity, and contradictions
of relational work (ibid.:149). Cultural content is located in economic transactions
themselves; „culture‟ is not treated as an external force or constraint that works on
exchanges from the outside (Zelizer, 2005:44). Relational work is not only about
meaning-making, but is conjoined with practice; it has a behavioural or symbolic
cultural dimension (Bandelj, 2012:182). Hence, relational work or relationality in
economic life is a process between actors that is yet to be accomplished; it is relational
work rather than systems of social ties structured into networks. In this way, the
relational work concept resuscitates people‟s agency, strategies, and self-interest, as
actors incessantly struggle and negotiate the matching of relations, transactions, media,
and meanings.
I draw on the notion of relational work to ponder over the relationships in
Bedok Market, and to bring out the contributions that an ethnography can bestow on
economic sociology. I reject neoclassical economic assumptions of the marketplace
and its actors. Economic and social-cultural life do not belong to „hostile worlds‟, but
are intrinsically intertwined. I also reject the aforementioned assumptions of
embeddedness theorists. Rather, a meaning-centred take on Bedok Market views
economic relationships as being socially constituted, and inquires into the contents
and idiosyncrasies of these bonds. I explore the particularities of socialities in Bedok
Market in Chapter 3, elucidating the micro-level process through which relationships
are forged and sustained. My ethnography also conjoins meaning-making with

14

practice and behaviour. In Chapter 3 and 4, I tease out what people really do in the
marketplace, and what these actions mean to them. In sum, I muse over the microlevel culture of Bedok Market – how experiences and practices in and of Bedok
Market generate sociality and drama. Throughout the thesis, I proffer descriptions that
demonstrate how individuals are pragmatic actors who have a keen sense of agency
and strategy; they constantly work out, enact, and (re)shape marketplace culture and
memories. Multiple logics of these components flourish; a spectrum of socialities,
performances, and stories result from the meaning-making and behavioural processes
that actors undertake.
In Chapter 5, I take a narrative angle to the memories of the vanishing
marketplace. To be concise, I juxtapose the stories related by the hawkers and
customers and those articulated by NHB personnel and heritage bloggers. This
comparison supplies methods of producing and assessing knowledge about
marketplaces that shun top-down and armchair data analysis, policy formulation and
promulgation. In other words, it problematizes the master narrative about
marketplaces that descends from the above. Furthermore, I stake a claim on the
importance of the continuity of marketplaces. Marketplaces harbour immense social
value, and their disappearance is compelling to my informants and society in general.
Therefore, I point to the need for comparative research in order to better identify
measures that enable marketplaces to become more resilient, enduring, and socially
meaningful.
1.4. On sociality, performance, and social memory
1.4.1. Sociality
Watson and Studdert (2006:3) lament that the sparse literature on marketplaces
privileges the economic dimension of these spaces and rarely explores the role of

15


marketplaces as sites of sociality, despite the fact that since antiquity, marketplaces
have been lauded to be focal points for local communities and hubs of connection,

interconnections, and social interaction. Nevertheless, some recent work has
recognized the social relevance of marketplaces. Sherry (1990a) investigates buyer
and seller behaviour, marketplace ambience, the social embeddedness and experience
of consumption in a flea market in Midwest America, while Stillerman (2006a; 2006b)
ruminates how the street markets of Santiago convey the place of grocery shopping in
fostering and maintaining relations among vendors and customers.
Lui (2008) engages in an ethnographic comparison of the meanings attached to
shopping behaviours in wet and supermarkets in Hong Kong, and shows how these
meanings incorporate the social relationships that are present among various
categories of people – buyers and sellers, family members, friends and neighbours,
employers and employees. In wet markets, trust and closeness sprout and mature
among buyers and sellers from the daily conversations, and sharing of knowledge
about foods (ibid.:6-9). In supermarkets, a sense of distance and professionalism
characterizes the relationship between supermarket patrons and employees (ibid.:7).
In Singapore, Chia (2010/2011:5) has researched the ways that wet markets, as
everyday spaces of consumption, nurture a sense of neighbourhood community,
querying the link between everyday consumption practices in wet markets and the
establishment of neighbourhood communities. She draws on consumption studies in
geography to explore „how socialities and spatialities of consumption…[are] deeply
intertwined by looking at everyday spaces of consumption and consumption practices‟
in wet markets (ibid.:11). Hence, Chia (2010/2011:16) dons a spatial and geographical
lens to sketch out the ways through which wet markets build neighbourhood

16


communities via place-making; she pushes for a positive relationship between
mundane sites of consumption and community building.
Watson and Studdert (2006), in an extensive study, consider the social role of
eight marketplaces in the United Kingdom. They discover some degree of social

interaction, although there are variations in the strength of social ties, level of social
inclusion and exclusion, and use of the spaces by different groups (ibid.:vii). They
conclude that marketplaces require four features to function well as social sites:
features which attract visitors, opportunities to linger, good access to the marketplaces,
and an active and engaged community of traders (ibid.:viii).
Watson (2009) further develops the 2006 study, digging deeper into the
multiple types of socialities present in marketplaces. People can „rub along‟
(ibid.:1581); they enter limited encounters where they acknowledge one another
through a passing glance, see and are seen, and share embodied spaces (ibid.:1581).
These cursory experiences hinder the withdrawal into the self or private space (ibid.).
The care of marginalized and excluded individuals, such as the elderly and disabled, is
performed in marketplaces too; marketplaces produce „inclusive sociality‟ (ibid.:15841585). Marketplace „theatre and performance‟ denote the ways traders use banter,
playful speech, and pitching to portray themselves as amusing performers, and lure
customers in (ibid.:1584-1585). Marketplaces are also sites of cross cultural
relationships and associations that mediate difference (ibid.:1585-1589). Diverse
categories of people come into contact in marketplaces; marketplaces are spaces of
commingling and meeting of strangers, and of mediating ethnic, class, and gender
differences among heterogeneous groups (ibid.).
In this thesis, I expand this research on marketplace socialities by investigating
how the rhythms of Bedok Market affect the customer-customer, hawker-customer,

17


and hawker-hawker relationships there. Like Watson (2009), I contend that the
marketplace is a site of multiple socialities; a range of ties thrive, and I delineate the
meanings and behaviours that animate it. I deviate from Chia (2010/2011) because I
am not interested in a spatial and geographical perspective on the relationship between
consumption practices and neighbourhood socialities, or in the notion of place-making.
Furthermore, Lui (2008) and Chia (2010/2011) are overwhelmingly positive and

uncritical when they explicate how the qualities of the marketplace influence the kinds
of relationships found there. The bonds among several groups of people in the
marketplace – buyers, sellers, friends, neighbours, and employees – are portrayed as
being affirmative and unproblematic. The reverse is true for the ties forged in the
supermarket.
In contrast, I turn a discerning eye to the range of socialities in Bedok Market.
I tease out the politics and contradictions that go into the creation, negotiation, and
annulment of ties. I allow for the possibility that bonds are not always cordial or
harmonious, and that they may not build (neighbourhood) communities. Moreover, I
employ Zelizer‟s (2005; 2012) relational work concept to make sense of how
ambiguous relationships are relationally worked out, marked by boundaries, and
matched with relevant economic transactions, exchange media, and negotiated
meanings. In this sense, these relationships are not merely forms of sociality, but
interweave economics and sociability.
1.4.2. Performance
In Chapter 4, I seek to add to the cultural and economic sociology literature by
comprehending transactions in Bedok Market through Goffman‟s dramaturgical
terminology. Some research on buying and selling transactions in marketplaces
apprehend these exchanges through the performative paradigm of Goffman and other

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theorists who have expounded on his ideas. In Shepherd‟s (2008) ethnography of
Eastern Market in the United States, he deploys a dramaturgical pentad to understand
the performative action that happens there. Using Burke‟s (1945) terminology,
The scene (the Sunday flea market) is the site for acts (of not just selling and
buying but…strolling, looking, chatting, browsing, setting up goods, assigning
space, negotiating and gossiping) carried out by various agents (vendors,
customers, market staff, merchants, farmers and observers). The agency (how

acts are done) of these agents varies, as does the purpose (the why of these
actions). (Shepherd, 2008:16; emphasis his)

Discussing the many reasons why different agents participate in the drama of
„this particular market‟ (ibid.; emphasis his), and the manners in which they do so –
„who does what, how they do this, and why they do this‟ – unearths the complexity of
human action and the place of ambiguity in the performance of everyday life (ibid.).
Framing marketplaces as social processes, scenes of performance, play, and economic
exchange (Kapchan, 1993:308-309 cited in Shepherd, 2008:15) also delineates how
economic exchange is embedded in cultural practice.
Cook (2008) and his contributors also capitalize on a dramaturgical framework
in their inquiries into a variety of marketplaces. They engage „the materiality and
sociality of marketplaces – i.e. of public exchanges spatially situated‟ (ibid.:2). They
adopt the experiences and practices of marketplaces as their leap off point, because
„something irreducible occurs in the public, face-to-face encounters of buyers and
sellers, of observers and participants, in the terrestrial market‟ (ibid.).
According to Cook (2008), the performance of value in economic life is one
such „irreducible‟ entity. It is identified via individuals who occupy specific positions
and sport identities vis-à-vis others. In marketplaces, „to encounter value is to
encounter and interact with things and…others – to smell and feel the goods…observe
those others milling about buying, looking, selling, dickering, joking – that is, to be

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seen in public‟ (ibid.:7). In Goffmanian (1959; 1967; 1979) terms, individuals enter
ritual practices or take on postures of typified identities when they interact face-toface. These representations are inseparable from exchange values and relations (Cook,
2008:7). In light of the age-old association between marketplaces and theatre (Agnew,
1986), it is pertinent to flesh out how exchanges are co-productions that rope in sellers,
buyers, and the stage – all integral to the meaning and interpretation of economic

performances (Cook, 2008:7).
1.4.3. Social memory
In Chapter 5, I examine and contrast the stories that four groups relate vis-à-vis
the disappearing marketplace. In doing so, I build upon work on the social memories
of and nostalgia for vanishing/vanished spaces. For instance, Watson and Wells (2005)
analyse the hollowing out of a London marketplace through the notion of nostalgia.
Contemplating the nostalgia in people‟s narratives of an old, white, working class
marketplace, the authors state that „a nostalgia for the halcyon days of the market
when people came from far and wide to shop, and when there was a strong sense of
community‟ has arisen (ibid.:17). Nonetheless, this is a romanticized rendition of the
past, which masks the social division of the time, and pins the blame for the
dissatisfaction towards the present on a new population of asylum seekers (ibid.).
Davis (1979) would categorize the aforementioned form of nostalgia – the
search for remembrances of past persons and places to give meaning to present and
future ones (ibid.:vii) – as „simple nostalgia‟ (ibid.:16). Simple nostalgia positively
evokes a lived past in relation to some negative feeling towards the present (ibid.:18).
Harbouring affections for the past, individuals feel a sense of loss now that their
personal past is annihilated. Although they yearn to return to the past, they
acknowledge that this is impossible. In simple nostalgia, a picture of „The Beautiful

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Past and Unattractive Present‟ does not deny the inconveniences of the past, but opts
to play them down (ibid.:18). In Chapter 5, I probe into the notion of nostalgia among
four groups of individuals. I also raise Davis‟ (1979) notion of „private nostalgia‟ –
symbolic images from the past that stem from people‟s biography (ibid.:123) – where
this is contextualized in „collective nostalgia‟ – situations where symbolic objects
have a public, shared, and familiar character, such that they trigger waves of nostalgia
in larger populations (ibid.:122).

1.5. Exploring the culture and social memories of the marketplace
In Chapter 1, I have set up the conceptual framework of my thesis. I embark
on a meaning-centred study of the micro-level culture of Bedok Market, and
memories of the declining marketplace. I have emphasized the significance of an
ethnography of a neighbourhood marketplace for the cultural and economic sociology,
and social memory literature, and reviewed some concepts that I will use in the
proceeding chapters.
In Chapter 2, I lay out my methodological framework, one that entails multimethod and multi-sited research, and ruminations about my work with an interpreter. I
also narrate the history of marketplaces in Singapore, and walk the reader through
Bedok and my fieldsite.
The story of Bedok Market commences in Chapter 3. I ponder over the types
of socialities that the marketplace precipitates – customer-customer, hawker-customer,
and hawker-hawker relationships – and the dynamics and nuances of each tie. I concur
with Watson (2009:1579) that the „social‟ is a myriad of lived encounters and overlaps.
In Bedok Market, a range of socialities proliferates because the „social‟ is conceived
in „many different ways across a continuum of limited engagement…to “thick”
engagement…with many possibilities in between‟ (ibid.:1581).

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In Chapter 4, buying and selling interactions between hawkers and customers
are understood in Goffman‟s (1959) performative terms. I analyse four dramaturgical
ingredients that constitute the „front stage‟ (ibid.) of this theatre: the front stage set up;
what hawkers call „the ability to talk‟; the differentiation of customers; and the
negotiation of price. There are several ways of enacting these components; a range of
dramaturgical techniques is exhibited. When this spectrum is kept to, transactions are
devoid of tension. However, degrees of inclusion, exclusion, and asymmetry can drive
transactions, and these exchanges then become rife with conflict. Thus, Chapter 3 and
4 picture Bedok Market as both an inclusive and exclusive playing field for hawkers

and customers. The marketplace invites the expression of agency and creativity in
negotiating sociality and buying and selling exchanges. It also provides a sense of
liminality in navigating power relations that draw from cultural norms. In this sense, I
posit that social organizations and meanings are not merely salient in Bedok Market,
but are also created and realized in this space.
In Chapter 5, I adopt a narrative stance to the tales that four categories of
people verbalize vis-à-vis the disappearing marketplace. I postulate that multiple and
heterogeneous narratives emerge, illustrating that the four groups (dis)engage
marketplace culture, and notions of nostalgia and heritage to varying extents. These
narratives also spell out the different positions and investments from which various
groups of actors appropriate the marketplace.

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Chapter 2. Methodological issues and a saunter through Bedok Market
2.1. Erecting a multi-method framework
Bestor (2001) holds that a wide array of marketplaces has been documented
ethnographically, and a trawl through the literature testifies to this. Maisel (1974) and
Sherry (1990a; 1990b) pave the way for a rigorous naturalistic investigation of flea
markets, and Belk et al.‟s (1988) interrogation of Red Mesa Swap Meet positions
itself as a pilot study that spawned subsequent projects which delve into second order
marketing systems. MacGrath et al. (1993) capture the dynamics of buying and selling
interactions, and the role of retailers and accompanying institutions in a farmers‟
market. Causey (2003) and Wherry (2006) add to the burgeoning literature with their
ethnographies of buying and selling encounters between artisans and tourists in tourist
marketplaces. The marketplaces which Shepherd (2008) and La Pradelle (2006) enter
resist being reduced to a singular form – La Pradelle notes that Carpentras is a
wholesale-truffle-street market. Depicting these as theatrical spaces, they employ
dramaturgical and phenomenological angles to elicit the ways through which the

drama – the scene, acts, agents, agency, and purpose (Burke, 1945) – of these
marketplaces take shape.
The aforementioned studies recruit a multi-method approach that uses
qualitative methods – participant observation, interviews, photographs, and videos –
to construct „thick descriptions‟ (Geertz, 1973) of the action that choreographs
marketplaces. All, save for MacGrath et al. (1993) and Sherry (1990a; 1990b), confine
their ethnographies to one marketplace; these other ethnographers conduct on- and
off-site research, and venture into a number of spaces.
Borrowing from the above authors, I adopted a multi-method framework that
utilized these methods: 1) various types of participant observation; 2) „conversations

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with a purpose‟ (Burgess, 1982); 3) semi-structured interviews with four groups
(hawkers, customers, a member of the National Heritage Board (NHB) and a teacher
who led a National Education Learning Journey5 to a marketplace, and heritage
bloggers); and 4) written and pictorial materials from blogs, the local press, and NHB
that were published from 2009 to 2013. In line with Bestor‟s (2004) method of touring
Tsukiji Fish Market with different parties, I went on tours of Bedok Market, other wet
and supermarkets, accompanied at times by an interpreter or what Edwards (1998)
calls a „key informant‟, and reflected on the role of an interpreter as a co-constructer
of data. In other words, my approach found a home among multi-sited studies.
Transiting several spaces was imperative because, as Chapter 4 will bear out, the
drama of buying and selling extends into these sites, and they are often the places
where the knowledge of foods becomes embodied, is acquired and exercised.
2.2. Participant observation, tours, and ruminations on the role of an interpreter
In January 2012, I conducted exploratory research, once a week, in Bedok
Market to garner a sense of the buying and selling interactions that transpired between
the hawkers and customers, identified potential key informants upon gauging the

personalities of certain hawkers and the location of their stalls (stalls located next to a
walkway were more spacious and amenable to observation), and built rapport with the
hawkers and customers. If one reflects on my „intellectual autobiography‟ (Temple,
1997),6 one will comprehend why the cacophony of dialects, the rapid flow of
interactions, and the dizzying variety of foods were a rude assault on my senses and
5

According to the Ministry of Education, Learning Journeys are „all trips out of schools which teachers
and students embark on together to extend and enrich the educational experience. Besides helping to
make real and concrete what has been learnt in schools, Learning Journeys will broaden the mental
horizons of students and contribute to their total development.‟ Learning Journeys need to fulfil four
criteria. They should instill pride in Singapore‟s achievements; help their participants understand the
constraints, challenges and opportunities that Singapore faces; build confidence in Singapore‟s future;
and highlight the point that Singapore is our home ( />6
I lay out my „intellectual autobiography‟ (Temple, 1997) in relation to my research and the
marketplace later in this section.

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anthropological imagination. As an outsider to the marketplace, how was I to make
sense of this „chaos‟?
To alleviate this, I got my aunt, Jennifer, to bring me on tours of Bedok Market.
She did, for a short period of time – from December 2011 to January 2012. Jennifer
patronizes both wet and supermarkets, has a comprehensive stock of knowledge about
foods, and could double up as an interpreter. Quickly, I was socialized into the „body
cues‟ (Figuie and Bricas, 2010:179) or the „direct qualification procedures…which
stimulate the sensory capacities of the subject to evaluate the physical characteristics
of the product‟ when purchasing food. Phrased in another manner, my interpreter
taught me how to „see, touch and smell fish, chicken and vegetables‟ in order to assess

their freshness. During the tours, I sketched a mental map of Bedok Market in terms
of the physical layout of the stalls and foods sold, the hawkers‟ personalities, and the
flows of people and activity throughout the day. A map of the stalls is affixed to
Appendix 2.
I laboured to create a space and role for myself in which I could listen to
conversations between the hawkers and customers. However, not only was it difficult
to observe the hawkers without buying from them, but lingering at their stalls after
purchasing invited curious stares from them and their neighbours. The hawkers
monitored my actions closely, and I would learn repeatedly that the visibility of
exchanges in the marketplace – a public and open space – meant that participants were
attuned to one another‟s actions.
Once, Jennifer was teaching me how to „see fish‟ at Lim‟s stall, and this
aroused Lim‟s curiosity: „Girl, what are you doing? Learning how to see fish? Why?‟7
Jennifer revealed that I was a Masters student who was studying the wet market „for
7

Pseudonyms were used at the earliest point of the research – the transcription stage – and are still used
throughout this thesis.

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