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Weaving value: Selling carpets in the liminal space of Istanbul's Grand Bazaar
Author(s) -
SCALCO PATRICIA
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
anthropology today
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.419
H-Index - 24
eISSN - 1467-8322
pISSN - 0268-540X
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8322.12527
Subject(s) - bazaar , trickster , liminality , value (mathematics) , reputation , space (punctuation) , advertising , art , history , sociology , media studies , aesthetics , literature , business , computer science , social science , archaeology , machine learning , operating system
All around the world, places of trade are typically conceived as places of deceit, if not outright danger: the plight of the carpet seller in Istanbul might be likened to that of the used car salesman in the West, for instance. But Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar is a particularly well‐known centre of (perceived) deceit – the home of the trickster par excellence – and carpet sellers are the iconic bearers of this reputation. As a threshold of thresholds, the bazaar is a global crossroads, where a huge diversity of cultures and histories intersect, and carpets are objects that express this perhaps the most magnificently.