‘We Have to Care for the Market’: Trade Commons Amid Competition and Digitalization of Popular Commerce (La Paz, Bolivia)

• In Event: Making “the Public” in Popular Economies: Latin America’s Changing Shared Economic Spheres

Abstract

Traders associations in La Paz (Bolivia) often use the phrase ‘To care for the market’ to express their felt obligation to regulate wholesale and retail trade in electronic appliances. It is an assertion made against both national department stores who want to settle down in their territory as well as the East Asian manufacturers (Samsung, LG, Sony, Huawei) who intend to narrow distribution channels. At the same time, on an individual level, traders receive bonus payments and other incentives from the manufacturers’ marketing divisions that aim at ‘formalizing’ popular commerce by standardizing traders’ shops and tracking their merchandise. In this paper, I set out to explore the tensions between individual interests and collective identities among traders in electronics in Bolivia. I use ‘trade commons’ to name local economies and associations that strive to regulate market access and competition in urban space amid processes of differentiation and digitalization of popular commerce.

Author

• Juliane Müller, University of Munich LMU