Urban markets as a ‘corrective’ to advanced urbanism: The social space of wet markets in contemporary Singapore

Abstract

The renewed popularity of urban markets has generated substantial attention among policymakers, planners and urban scholars. In addition to their potential local economic impact, markets provide spaces for a variety of social exchanges and interactions that may strengthen communal ties, reproduce existing social tensions or simply reflect everyday diversity; consequently, the social functions of urban markets differ depending on the specific social, political and economic context in which individual markets operate. Based on data from interviews, questionnaires and participant observation, this article examines social exchanges and interactions within wet markets (meat, fish, fruits and vegetable markets) in Singapore. The types of social interactions found in wet markets are wide-ranging and informal, and occur across different ethnicities, generations, social statuses and classes; they can range from casual exchanges to planned gatherings to sustained relations based on mutual reciprocity and trust. Wet markets are significant to Singaporeans because they are spaces of unmediated social interactions and, within the context of state governance and ongoing modernisation, increasingly exceptional. The attachment to wet markets is a collective, social response to an ongoing process in which existing and meaningful social spaces (e.g. neighbourhoods and markets) are being erased by a redeveloped urban landscape, a concomitant disappearance of unregulated community space, and the pervasiveness of normative consumerism.

Meeting on the marketplace: on the integrative potential of The Hague Market

“…Janssens 2014; Mele, Ng, and chim 2015;Pottie-Sherman 2013;Watson 2009). As ethnographic approach, participant observation requires spending time being, living or working with people or communities to understand them.…”

“…The renewed interest in marketplaces results from an increased awareness that they are not merely locations of economic transactions, but also nodes of complex social processes and generators of cultural activity (Hiebert, Rath, and Vertovec 2015;Mele, Ng, and chim 2015;Ünlü-Yücesoy 2013). Oftentimes, when we visit a place for the first time, we head to its main marketplace to get a sense of the city.…”

“…Yet, these meetings are social interactions nonetheless, even when limited to a smile or nod (Janssens and Sezer 2013b). Such "unfocused interaction" (Goffman 1963) can be of great importance to urban life, because even without direct, "focused" contact, sharing spaces with people different from oneself has the potentiality to develop public familiarity, strengthen communal ties, achieve the feeling of comfortable "co-presence", and challenge racists discourses and stereotypes of unknown others (Mele, Ng, and chim 2015;Spierings, Van Melik, and Van Aalst 2016;Watson 2009).…”

“…Yet, academic research on the integrative potential of marketplaces is still relatively recent (Watson 2009), with existing studies often focusing on the everyday life on the market, including exchanges between and amongst sellers and buyers (e.g. Lin Pang and Sterling 2013; Mele, Ng, and chim 2015;Polyák 2014). However, although bringing conviviality to the city, it is questionable to what extent these -often brief and functional -meetings on the "ground level" of the marketplace, actually lead to mentality change and prejudice deconstruction (Valentine 2008;Watson 2006).…”

Biosecurity and disease management in China’s animal agriculture sector

“…Potable water and contained sewage systems deny germs the opportunity to spread. Although demand for live birds might decline were infrastructure sufficient to convince consumers that processed animals are wholesome, live bird demand may be motivated in part by social wants (Mele et al, 2014).…”