M.L. (Laura) Viteri: Social Aspects at a wholesale market of fresh fruit and vegetables

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8 Dec 2010 11:00
Unit: Rural Development Sociology Group
Location: Aula, building 362, Gen. Foulkesweg 1, Wageningen
Organisation: Wageningen University
Promotor: prof.dr.ir. J.S.C. Wiskerke (Rural Sociology)
Co Promotor: dr. A.M.G. Arce

 This research explores ethnographically the everyday social interactions between the ‘users’ of a particular marketplace, the Buenos Aires Central Wholesale Market (BACWM). The ‘users’ of this marketplace are the social actors who work there everyday, and who bring and buy fresh produce. These ´users´ are the ´makers´ of the BACWM since, through their everyday practices, interactions and interpretations and knowledge, they socially construct this hub of distribution.

The choice of the BACWM as the object of study is based on its central role in the distribution of fresh fruit and vegetables in Argentina. This marketplace supplies to more than 11 million consumers, and moves more than 1 million tons of fresh produce a year. Thus, this marketplace provides an interesting window on the complex changes occurring in the fresh produce net-chain in Argentina over the last years. By focusing on the interactions between people and the effect of these interactions on the distribution of fresh produce, this thesis addresses the following question: how do the ‘makers’ of the BACWM face changes in a context of fresh fruit and vegetable distribution?

By paying attention to local everyday social practices, it is possible to explain how multiple ways of fresh produce circulation are generated at the BACWM. This marketplace is a social product located not in one social space but in many, in fact, by an unlimited or multiple or uncountable set of social spaces, since its users perceived, conceived of and lived in this marketplace in different ways. It means that economic, social and cultural activities are embedded in an assemblage of people, fresh produce, trolleys, laboratory devices, phone cables, trucks, and so on that cannot be explained in terms of the flow of products alone.

Title thesis: Fresh Fruit and Vegetables: A world of Multiple Interactions

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