Valea Cascadelor: constructing and negotiating identities in a Bucharest flea market
Valea Cascadelor: constructing and negotiating identities in a Bucharest flea market

Summary/Abstract: The proposed study approaches the subject of marginal urban transactional spaces as places of construction and negotiation of identities. Also, the research can be inscribed in a broader direction of anthropological discourse, in which markets are nodes of complex social processes that facilitate economic transactions but extend beyond them. Specific markets, such as flea markets in urban areas, are embedded in the fabric of the community, “organised around the complex, multistranded relationships that intertwine gender, ethnicity, class and kinship, as well as economic role” (Bestor, 2001, 9228). The flea market, situated in the broader cultural milieu of social values and norms, becoming an arena where various people or groups interact and negotiate identities. “Valea Cascadelor” flea market is an open-air market. This organism adapts to the seasons and holidays. Those interested can buy anything from antiques to cheap substitutes for symbols of social status or everyday objects recovered and reintroduced into the exchange circuit of goods. Diversity defines the range of things and actors, people from all social and professional backgrounds or different ethnicities. This improvised museum of material culture is built by the people who frequent it and by the objects traded, which in turn help to construct the identity of those involved. As a case study, the research presents the history of a small fine art collection (graphics and paintings) composed of artworks bought exclusively from the “Valea Cascadelor” flea market. The interview captures the development of the collection over ten years, the contextual artwork analysis, the evolution of a unique profile-the flea market art collector- (Italian citizen, resident in Romania for 12 years) and the transactional behaviour observation involving identity negotiation on both sides.

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