Alternativno trgovanje između potrebe i razonode
Alternative Trade Between Need and Leisure

Summary/Abstract: The author considers alternative trade as a complex phenomenon with diverse content and numerous forms. She treats here only one of its manifestations, namely a fair of second-hand goods and cars, which takes place once a week on the South-eastern periphery of Zagreb, in Jakuševac. The author briefly traces the tradition of fair trade in Zagreb, which has continued since the 13th century. The importance of the fair in Jakuševac - its non-normative character - is emphasized in contradistinction to medieval and modern - urban and rural - characteristics of fairs. For the experience, description and analysis of that specific and dynamic happening on the edge of a big city, which is a mixture of legal and illegal elements, of reality and illusion, of subtle trading acts and primeval joy of trade, the author used participants’ accounts. They were recorded in the spring of 1990. The author organized the data in such a way to present a wide -range of motivations of individuals who participate in selling and buying. Motivations range from mere entertainment on the one end, to sheer necessity for survival on the other. Taking the fair of that type to be a sublimated account of the time in which we live, the author thinks that in its offer she can recognize the social crisis which struck Yugoslavia in 1990. However, the author does not consider alternative trade to be a crisis of society, but a crisis of individuals. Consequently, non-normative trade is defined as a way by which an individual attempts to overcome the afflictions which have come upon him. Picturesquely, it is path of a small man who bypasses normal paths of big social systems.

• Details
• Contents