Ethnography of Trust and History as Circulating Commodities in Chauta Bazaar, Surat

What is it about?

Focused on a historically evolved marketplace, Chauta Bazaar of Surat (Gujarat), this article looks at the question of trust and its contours. In the popular perception, this bazaar has a history of five centuries of continuous survival. This account of a marketplace reveals everyday practices, popular investments in terms of its historical embeddedness and the manner in which notions of trust circulate in this market. The study argues that the narratives of trust are spatial as well as transmitted through generations. The ethnography throws a number of issues pertaining to this marketplace, popularly considered as a women’s market. At a wider level, the article goes beyond exploring the historical trajectories of this marketplace and looks at the narratives in which history is mobilised as an active agency shaping the dynamics of trust in a marketplace.

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Why is it important?

Keywords Trust, ethnography of market, history as commodity, Chauta Bazaar, Surat