Across the counter relations: sociability in the farmersʼ markets of Bistrița and Năsăud
Across the counter relations: sociability in the farmersʼ markets of Bistrița and Năsăud

Summary/Abstract: Based on ethnographic research into the markets in Bistrița and Năsăud and of the work conditions on rural farms, I managed to write an article on economic anthropology to be included in complex society studies. This is meant to demonstrate that the market (agro-market or the fair-market), far from being an essentially commercial area governed by strictly economic parameters (utilitarian ones), is a complex societal institution which extends the Maussian relations (based on reciprocity and mutual assistance) in the village framework, in conjunction with the spirit of sociability and civic-deliberative freedom typical of the urban area; it connects individuals and aggregates networks of easy-going practices; it continues, even if in desacralised forms, certain cultural traditions of a festive-carnivalesque type, focused on topoi as well as on primordial elements, such as nature, abundance, land toiling, etc. This study also tries to follow up on the diachronic evolution of markets in the two cities in a sustainable symbiotic relation with the rural hinterland.

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