CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2023
| Author | Nana Iashvili |
|---|---|
| Title | From Survival To Business: Renegotiating Value In The Georgian Dry Bridge Flea Market |
| Summary | This thesis explores the Dry Bridge Flea Market in the heart of Tbilisi and the work and life of its vendors. Emerging during the turmoil of the collapse of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, the market is a peculiar example of a public vending site that survived privatization and evictions and is one of the most famous tourist destinations in Tbilisi today. The historical and ethnographic focus of the market necessarily generates questions about value, how it is produced and who is going to capture it. Drawing on value theory of anthropology as an inspiration and conceptual framework, I think of value constantly in the process of construction by actors (Graeber 2001). By looking at the market and its history over the past 30 years, I argue that the questions of value, the evaluation and negotiation of what is valuable in the newly independent state as it gets integrated into the global market economy come in a particular light. Drawing on archival research and months of fieldwork, I zoom into the sellers of the Dry Bridge Flea Market to show how they navigate and negotiate their importance and [un]importance and how the processes influence the value of the objects they sell. |
| Supervisor | Alexandra Kowalski, Claudio Sopranzetti |
| Department | Sociology MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2023/iashvili_nana.pdf |
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