In the heart of the city: power games in popular markets

Abstract

Popular markets are distinguished by intense power struggles and games of power. Here, forms of control, coercion, and surveillance are both established and contested, by way of legal and extralegal means, while simultaneously activating aggressive mechanisms for income extraction along the transaction of political commodities and their avatars, which also constitute, and are constituted, by the circuits of wealth in contention (Tilly, 1996). This is the scenario of latent or overt conflict in which workers, who resist these dynamics, activate networks of trust and tactics in response to the disputes surrounding the operational logic of popular markets and the governance of these territories, especially under the impact of differentiated pandemic management.

Popular markets; Illegalisms; City; Work