The easy answer, I suppose, has to do with anthropology's engagement with "development" programs. Anthropologists have an extensive knowledge base about small communities, and often work with organizations that aim to help small entrepreneurs, small shop-keepers and traders. So that's one answer. In our case, we often have clients whose products are sold through these smaller retailers: Epson sells products to small Internet shops in Brazil; a global confection client sells its products in China through big-box retailers (including Walmart) and, more often, the "traditional trade," the mom and pop store. Our encounters there tend to be product and shopper-focused, and they leave us with a bag full of questions about how these shops operate, and why.
I had not found much in the literature about these kinds of shops, until I started using "shopkeeper" as a search term (and I should get away from the computer and spend a little time in a real, non-virtual library one of these afternoons). There are some interesting things out there that comprise a rapidly growing guilt-list of articles that deserve a close reading. (Barry L. Isaac, who probably wouldn't mind being labeled an economic anthropologist, has been very gracious in sending along some articles about West Africa that ask and answer some interesting questions about small shopkeeping and trading--there's more to read and digest, there). The literature, plus our field encounters in Brazil and China these past few years, suggest some questions that could be answered by some careful ethnographic work. Here are a few:
Are mom and pops really mom and pops, or are they really "mom's"? I have a hunch that the "petty shops" in China are woman owned and operated in most cases. Is this so?
In Mainland China, mom and pop shops, or at least some of the products they sell, are seen as less trustworthy than the products bought from big retailers. We understand this—sort of—but there are puzzles here, likely related to the specifics of product, and perhaps to the relationship between client and seller. Yunxiang Yan (2000, 2001) has noted this in his work on McDonald's in China, suggesting that folks don't trust the vendors in the wet-market much: they are always trying to squeeze an extra yuan out of their customers, and are not trustworthy—unlike, perhaps, the closer relationships between regular customer and seller in the Philippines, where the "suki" relationship extends certain rights and responsibilities to buyer and seller (see Davis, 1973, on my "guilt stack,") or the "regular customer" in the USA who may expect a square deal or something extra, in a relationship with a small mom & pop.
That goes to the importance of social obligations, of reciprocity, and other kinds of social relationships that take place in non-monetary exchange, but that leak into exchange relationships. What's going on, here?
For example, when I am short of cash, the fellow in the local coffee shop across the street will front me the extra dollar, and I'll give it back the next day (that won't happen at Starbucks). He and I talk about the charreada and about his horses; we pass the time of day. When does this happen, when does it not, and does it matter? How tightly bound to sociability—what Isaac called "etiquette" when writing about Pendembu shopkeepers and hawkers and traders—are monetary exchange relations among shopkeepers and clients? When you buy from Walmart, are you buying from a stranger, always? (Probably not quite). When you buy from the mom & pop grocery, are you buying from a friend, always? (Probably not quite). So, stepping aside from the rather impersonal transaction, what's the importance of sociability, reciprocity, all that messy human stuff, in buying a pack of gum or what-have-you?
And what about "niche?" To what extent does the product mix (or the product, if there is just one or just a few) make a difference in the way a small shop works? Back in the 1960s, Barth suggested that economic anthropologists ought to study entrepreneurs in terms of "niches," or "the positions they occupy in relation to resources, competitors, and clients" (Isaac 1979:192). Barry Isaac did that very thing, with interesting results. And if I think about meatpacking (perishable, often hypermasculine sort of product and manufacturing process) and the meat trade, versus, say, greeting cards (non-perishable, women-focused and artistic design and male printing/manufacturing process, often, seasonal products), you begin to see a lot of social stuff, and gender stuff, behind the simple buying and selling in the butcher shop or the card shop.
As big global companies continue to piss off their customers (think: Ikea pulling all the branded Swedish foods from their Ikea grocery; Netflix starting then stopping a new access fee; and Bank of America adding, then eliminating, new ATM fees) and as the current economic shit-storm (or the general rotten state of work-life in too many companies) continues to drive people out of decent jobs and into home-based or other, often struggling, micro-businesses, understanding what is going on in that arena, the small-shop arena, seems of more than just theoretical interest.
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REFERENCES
Davis, William G.
1973 Social Relations in a Philippine Market: Self-Interest and Subjectivity. Berkeley: U.C. Press.
Isaac, Barry L.
1979 The Economic, Ethnic, and Sexual [Gender] Parameters of Petty Trading in Pendembu, Sierra Leone. In Essays on the Economic Anthropology of Liberia and Sierra Leone, Vernon R. Dorjahn and Barry L. Isaac, (eds.), Newark, DE: Liberian Studies Assoc., Monograph Series 6:173-195.
Yan, Yungxian
2000 “Of Hamburger and Social Space: Consuming McDonald's in Beijing.” In Deborah Davis (ed.) The Consumer Revolution in Urban China, pp. 201-225. Berkeley: University of California Press.
2001 McDonald's in Beijing: The Localization of Americana. In Daniel Miller (ed.) Consumption: Critical Concepts in the Social Sciences, pp. 335-354. New York: Routeledge.
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