Schnapper, Quentin <br/><br/>
An acquaintance ship-based economy market relations in a business district of an exurban town in France 

 -  2023.<br/>							 
<br/><br/> 88 
<br/><br/> Through an ethnographic study of the shops and businesses of an exurban town, this article explores the functioning of an acquaintanceship-based economy—a specific type of business district in which interdependent merchants earn income through individual and collective use of market relations within one and the same geographic locality. This type of economy operates through the interaction of greater urban area externalities, professional norms, and local institutions in the managing of a common good. The article retraces how the merchants defend and share the “customer” resource; then takes up the specificity of economic exchanges and reputations within a space defined by acquaintanceship. Last, it describes the ambivalence of female [“commerçantes”] merchants’ strategies for winning customer loyalty, strategies closely related to the kinds of sociability characteristic of rural centers and small towns in France. By taking the question of space seriously, it brings to light some of the local economic structures that may develop at the intersection of a set of differentiated markets and through interdependency chains that involve sharing whatever customers spend time, or are likely to spend time, in the given geographic area.