Urbanities,
Vol. 4
·
No 2
·
November 2014
© 2014
Urbanities
31
beddi
, and so on. One sensory code calls on others; the vendors’ voices stimulate the eyes of
the passers-by to notice the colours and the beauty of the produce, to pay attention to the
smell or even to prefigure the taste of the red strawberries. The vendors themselves allude to
the synaesthetic experience of their products.
Inside the market, the cries of the sellers intensify as they hawk their wares loudly. In
Piazza Alonzo di Benedetto the fishermen occupy centre stage, orchestrating a dialogue with
passers-by, challenging each other, and very often disparaging the competition. Each time a
person slows down or his or her eyes pause a little longer on the fish on display, the fisherman
extols loudly the characteristic of his wares. These announcements both point to the freshness
of the goods on sale and include details that only the fishermen would know. Statements such
as ‘We fished it two hours ago!’, ‘We fished it in the Brucoli’s area’ remind the buyers that
they would be buying directly from the source. The competition also revolves around the
price and this is particularly true for seasonal fish. Apart from the playful prattle for the
benefit of tourists and their cameras, the
vanniate
(cries) are targeted mainly at the local
experts, since the fishermen use the Catanese name to refer to fish: ‘
puppo
, 10€’ (squid, 10€),
‘
masculini,
3€’ (anchovies, 3€), ‘
saddi
, 4€’ (sardines, 4€), and so on.
Recently, in Istanbul, a law forbade vendors from shouting in the street market.
Stallholders opposed the ban by arguing that it affected their trade. They insisted that
‘shouting is a long-standing market tradition dating back hundreds of years’ (Allen 2012). In
Weare, a small town in New Hampshire, the regulation for vendors at the farmer’s market
reads ‘[h]awking is not permitted (shouting prices or shouting about items for sale)’ (Weare
Summer Farmers Market 2012).
While in the historical Sicilian market shouting is considered ‘normal’, vendors in the
monthly organic farmers’ market in Catania do not promote their goods loudly. This
difference can be related to the bourgeois desire for privacy and seclusion (Bailey 1996),
which has tried to silence the world (Serres 2008). Noise belongs to the low (Bailey 1996) as
much as smell (Miller 1997), and a smelly, noisy market can be understood as a statement
against authority. Bailey claims that ‘[s]ilence [...] is the sound of authority — generational,
patriarchal and formidably inscribed in the regimes of church and state’ (1996: 54). It could
be argued that the market constitutes a space of disobedience against a neoliberal order which
sharpens social divisions and underscores the ‘fabric of social difference’ (Low and Smith
2006).
Conclusions
In this article I have argued in detail that the marketplace can be seen as a space under
construction, in which the apparent chaos is organised according to a specific cultural
ordering. I have examined the dynamics in a specific local market in connection to daily
practices and bodily knowledge. I have argued that, assuming that people’s relationship with
the urban space is active, complex and multi-sensory, this complexity can be approached
through a study of the sensory experience.
For centuries, markets have been quintessential public spaces (Degen 2008: 21) with
their own rules of exclusion and inclusion (Low and Smith 2006). At La Pescheria these rules
