Feiras livres: um breve estudo sobre tradição urbana, sociabilidade e resistência na cidade do Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

Even amid the dynamism of large urban centers, the tradition of the popular street fairs survives. Modern forms of food retailing are confronted with the old forms, and even those ones imposing it selves with the force and ideology of modernity, the new forms faces at the rejection of the old street fair to extinguish. The popular tradition of fairs is embedded in the culture of street life of small and large Brazilian cities. Although historically refurbished, it persists even in large cities. The popular Rio de Janeiro street fairs as we know them today - idealized in the early twentieth century as a modernization project of the forms of food retailing inherited from the colonial period - were for many times accused of obsolescence. This work brings a brief discussion on the place of street fairs against the inheritance of a progressive model of urbanism, the hegemony of modern forms of food retailing and the denial of the street as a place of permanence and meeting against the emergence of types of confined sociability that deny the diversity of urban free access spaces. By collecting testimonies that seek to grasp the various imaginary built on some street fairs in the city of Rio de Janeiro, this work aims to score some questions that may help us to understand the power of this ancient essentially urban tradition that endures as a strong street culture.