“It’s all about having fun,” Shopping in the Counterfeit Goods Market in China

• In Event: 20203 - Discerning Consumers across Race, Class, and Moral Divides

Abstract

Empirical studies on counterfeiting have primarily focused on identifying motivations for counterfeit consumption, neglecting to examine the transaction process of buying counterfeits. I shift the analytical attention from “what to buy” to “how to buy” by examining the interactions between sellers and buyers in an informal illicit market. Drawing upon 10 months of ethnography as a salesgirl in a marketplace that sells knockoffs in China, I find that consumers perceive the market as a tourist attraction site and seek fun experiences in this black market. I argue that the fun moments in the transaction process not only smooth out the deals by temporarily overcoming mutual distrust but also encourage comradeship between sellers and buyers who are complicit in the illegal business.

Author

• Yucheng Liu, University of California, Santa Barbara