Learning how to sell: Merchant work in Ukrainian rural areas
Deffontaines, Pierre
Learning how to sell: Merchant work in Ukrainian rural areas - 2019.
45
This article proposes an analysis of the socialization to merchant work in a post-socialist context where there is little institutional control over local markets, sellers and their products. Based on an ethnography of everyday economic practices in a village in central Ukraine, it shows how selling has to be learned. The learning process starts with a primary socialization to local markets, attended mainly by women, who are in charge of domestic work: it starts by learning how to buy. Becoming saleswomen on urban farmer markets implies another learning process: acquiring a familiarity with the logistic organization of urban markets, accounting practices of margins and calculation of prices. Far removed from educational or professional institutions, these socializations to merchant work depend on being integrated in local trading networks and are forged by experiences gained in the trade. They come to influence local economic inequalities and thus contribute to social differentiation in villages.
Learning how to sell: Merchant work in Ukrainian rural areas - 2019.
45
This article proposes an analysis of the socialization to merchant work in a post-socialist context where there is little institutional control over local markets, sellers and their products. Based on an ethnography of everyday economic practices in a village in central Ukraine, it shows how selling has to be learned. The learning process starts with a primary socialization to local markets, attended mainly by women, who are in charge of domestic work: it starts by learning how to buy. Becoming saleswomen on urban farmer markets implies another learning process: acquiring a familiarity with the logistic organization of urban markets, accounting practices of margins and calculation of prices. Far removed from educational or professional institutions, these socializations to merchant work depend on being integrated in local trading networks and are forged by experiences gained in the trade. They come to influence local economic inequalities and thus contribute to social differentiation in villages.
Réseaux sociaux