The spatiotemporal nature of market making : Insights from the favela tourism market in Rocinha

Fernandes, Josi and Mason, Katy (2022) The spatiotemporal nature of market making : Insights from the favela tourism market in Rocinha. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

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Abstract

The present thesis is concerned with the spatiotemporal nature of market-making practices. While previous literature on markets has explored the socio-material arrangements that enable the creation and performance of markets, less attention has been granted to the role that spatiality and temporality play in these arrangements and in overcoming barriers to market-making. The market studies literature has indicated that markets have a spatiotemporal dimension through notions such as that of situated practice and markets in the making (Cochoy, 2008; Mason et al., 2015; Palo et al., 2018; Stigzelius et al., 2018) and early works on time (Araujo and Easton, 2012; Easton and Araujo, 1994; Kavanagh and Araujo, 1995). Yet, these matters have not formed a central concern when seeking to understand market formation. Anchored in and combining the markets literature and its theoretical underpinning (e.g., Callon, 1998; Latour, 2005) with ideas from social theory (e.g., Lefebvre, 1991), the present thesis addresses these gaps and contributes to a more nuanced understanding of markets that includes a spatial and temporal dimension to the socio-material arrangements that make them (cf. Araujo, 2007). The insights contained in this thesis are derived from the research of favela-based local entrepreneurs in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, between 2016 and 2019. It is comprised of three papers, each adopting a different analytical lens. The first paper starts from the concept of stigma (Goffman, 1963; Wacquant, 2007) and, through a market studies approach, unpacks the temporally bounded agencements (Callon, 2016; Cochoy et al., 2016) that enabled the successful making of the favela tourism market. The second paper analyses the practices of favela local entrepreneurs to remake the market agencement after the breakout of a conflict in the favela through the lenses of Lefebvre’s (1991) spatial theory. Papers 1 and 2 revealed the importance of digital technologies in the market practices of favela entrepreneurs and spurred the ideas for the third and final paper of this thesis. The third paper is a methodology-oriented discussion where I reflect on my engagement with the technologically enmeshed Rocinha favela during my fieldwork and on the role of digital technologies in research practices and consequently, in knowledge production.