Environment and Planning D; Society and Space 1997, volume 15* pagan 87 112
The bargain^ the knowledge^ and the spectacle: making sense of consumption in the space of the car-boot sale Nicky Gregson Department of Geography, University of Shefileld, Sheffield S10 2TN, England; e-mail:
[email protected] Louise Crewe Department of Geography, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, England; e-mail:
[email protected] Received 1 February 1996; in revised form 29 May 1996
Abstract, We are concerned with making sense of the car-boot sale as an empirical and theoretical phenomenon. The paper is based on participant-observation field research, in-depth interviews, and site surveys and we start by challenging two of the most commonly held myths about car-boot sales; that these events arc all about 'shady rogues' disposing of volumes of dodgy gear onto an unsuspecting public, and that a preponderance of cheap goods means that ear-boot sales are dominated by 'tatt' and disadvantaged sectors of society. Having examined patterns of purchasing within the car-boot sale, we consider how car-boot-sale goers themselves construct and participate within the space of the boot sale. At one level, this construction is shown to involve the use both of accumulated and of local knowledge and to be open to interpretation as illustrative of competitive individualism. Another reading of the car-boot sale, however, and one central to understanding the enduring popularity of this phenomenon, is its transgressive nature. The space of the car-boot sale is argued to be one where people come to play, where the conventions of retailing are suspended, and where participants come to engage in and produce theatre, performance, spectacle, and laughter. We go on to examine the connections between the car-boot sale and the Bakhtinian notion of carnival, arguing that the car-boot sale needs to be read in multifarious ways: as a liminal space which encapsulates the carnivalesque, the festive, and the popular, which subverts convention and yet which, through its celebration of the free market and the unshackled individual, embraces facets of the dominant order. We then move on to comment on the broader significance of the car-boot-sale phenomenon for studies of consumption. 1 Introduction Our concern in this paper is with the car-boot-sale phenomenon in Britain, and specifically with examining what goes on within this space—with making sense of it, both empirically and theoretically. In so doing we hope, albeit indirectly, to give some insight into the massive and enduring popularity of such events in Britain in the 1990s. Car-boot sales, it is generally agreed, first appeared in Britain in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Situated primarily, although not exclusively, in fields, car parks, and/or open spaces on the urban fringe, and organised both by private sector promoters and by institutions such as schools and hospitals for fund-raising, these events involve the exchange of, for the most part, used household and personal goods. As such they connect with other similar spaces of secondhand exchange, notably jumble sales, flea markets, swap meets, and garage sales (Belk et al, 1988; Freedman, 1976; Gordon, 1985; Hermann and Soiffer, 1984; McCree, 1984; Maisel, 1976; Miller, 1988; Parrish, 1986; Razzouk and Gourley, 1982; Sherry, 1988; 1990; Soiffer and Hermann, 1987; Willis, 1990). In the case of car-boot sales, however, and as we have discussed elsewhere (Gregson and Crewe, 1994), sellers drive to a site where they pay a flat-rate fee to the promoter or organiser for a 'pitch' (usually of the order of £5-£7 for a car, more for a trailer and/or van), on which they park their car and from which they sell their goods (for the most part arranged on self-provided, do-it-yourself wallpapering or decorating tables of a style widely available from DIY superstores in the United Kingdom).
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However, it is only during the 1990s, as these events have expanded dramatically in terms of number and size, that they have attracted widespread political attention, and that they have become mass-participation events (Gregson et al, 1997). Indeed, during the past few years, while we have been conducting this research, we have on the one hand seen these events castigated in public debate, specifically in the context of the passage of the Deregulation and Contracting Out legislation (1994), and yet on the other represented as 'the fastest-growing leisure pursuit in Britain', attracting over one million people each weekend (LACOTS, 1993). Predictably, such circumstances have seen the production of numerous myths about car-boot sales, in particular: that these events are all about 'shady rogues', frequently cast in the mould of Arthur Daley or Del Boy,(1) disposing of volumes of 'dodgy gear' (be this 'knock-off', dangerous, counterfeit, or duty-free) onto an unsuspecting naive public; and that they are events characterised by 'mountains of tasteless tack', swarmed over and bought up by those variously labelled as 'poor', 'marginalised', and/or 'disadvantaged' (Allen, 1994; Boggan, 1994; Burns Howell, 1993; Constant, 1993; Johnson, 1993; Lavelle, 1995; Vander Weyer, 1994; Waundby, 1995). As with all myths, these two have some connection with what goes on within the boundaries of the boot sale. This we would not deny. But it is only some and, as we show here, to see these myths as all there is to 'the boot' is not only a gross oversimplification of these events, but is also misplaced and inaccurate. Instead, as we demonstrate in this paper, participation in the car-boot sale is frequently grounded both in detailed local geographical knowledge and in accumulated knowledge, and the boot sale itself needs to be read in multifarious ways: as emblematic of competitive individualism and the free market, but also as a transgressive space which captures and is constructed through theatre, performance, spectacle, and laughter. Our arguments in this paper are based predominantly on detailed field research in the participant-observation tradition. After one month of pilot research, during which a range of varying types of car-boot sale within our three study areas of South Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, and the North East were visited, including large, commercially run ventures, charity events organised by schools and hospitals, and Sunday, Saturday, and midweek sales, we identified a total of seven sites for detailed field research: five in the North East and one each in South Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire.(2) Each of these sites was visited on at least five separate occasions during the period April-August 1995 inclusive, and we also visited a number of others more infrequently. Correspondingly, for this five-month period, and regardless of weather, each weekend was devoted to 'booting'. July was set aside for an intensive phase of full-time 'booting', encompassing midweek as well as weekend events, (1)
Arthur Daley is the central character in the classic British television series "Minder". Portrayed as a likeable if scurrilous rogue, Daley made a living ostensibly from second-hand car sales. However, this activity was supplemented by dealing in various 'hot' (stolen) commodities. Although the last series of "Minder" has long since been made, Arthur Daley has been encoded in British popular culture as an instantly identifiable, and well-loved, petty criminal; witness 'his' appearance in various advertising campaigns for the Leeds Permanent Building Society. References to Arthur Daley abound in press reporting of car-boot sales, and are often accompanied by others to a similar figure: Del Boy. Del Boy is a character from the popular British television sitcom "Only Fools and Horses" who, along with his brother Rodney, runs Trotters Independent Trading Corporation from the back of a yellow Robin Reliant in Peckham, southeast London. The plot here typically revolves around Del Boy endeavouring to shift various dubiously acquired goods, which (inevitably) transpire to be shoddy, faulty, or undesirable—digital watches with no batteries, faulty car radios, videos which do not run on UK recorders, etc. (2) The location of field sites for participant-observation research reflects the practical considerations involved in weekend working, rather than anything intrinsically more interesting about car-boot sales in the North East.
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and involving typically of the order of seven events per week. For the most part we visited and participated in these events as buyers, mostly alone but occasionally with others, and spent anything from half an hour to three hours immersed in the activities which constitute and shape these events: strolling, looking, watching, listening, haggling, buying, engaging in banter and jest, and talking/3* On leaving we recorded, as soon as possible in our field diaries, our observations; conversations (ours and those wc had overheard); purchases we had made, might have made, and had tried to make but failed to get; feelings, thoughts, and emergent ideas. The diaries themselves make interesting reading, and move from what we would now see as an outsider position, one of relative ignorance and naivety in which we were seemingly obsessed with documenting the range of goods which it is possible to buy at a boot sale (infinite) and the amounts of money which were or were not being exchanged, to one in which our accumulated knowledges) enabled us to see the complexity and multiplicity of this landscape which wc, amidst all the others on the sitc(s), were engaged in constructing/4* We draw extensively on these diaries in what follows, using them in the style of Crang (1994) to support our reading of the car-boot sale as a liminal space, and to challenge the myths which surround the car-boot-sale phenomenon, all of which, we would maintain, stem from reading the car-boot sale from an outsider position. To supplement this research we also engaged in site surveys of the purchases and expenditure of 248 car-boot-sale buyers and in-depth interviews with 30 participants (12 of whom were vendors, the remainder buyers)/5* We also draw on this work in what follows. (3) We did for a while consider selling as well as buying at car-boot sales. However, this idea was rejected for two reasons. First, the things which we would be likely to sell, as well as one of our cars, meant that we would have been 'targeted' as are many other novice vendors (see section 4). Such circumstances would have been more akin to survival than to participant observation. Second, we felt that had we pursued this route with any degree of commitment we would have lost sight of our research objectives and substituted them with the pursuit of profit! (4) In parallel with this development in our understanding, and symptomatic of our movement from outsiders to insiders, there is a change in the language used in our field diaries. The language of the car-boot sale, particularly that used by experienced buyers and sellers, is to some extent coded, and resonates particularly strongly with that used by racecourse bookmakers and with cockney rhyming slang; two reasons, perhaps, why one of us found this language both relatively comprehensible and readily usable! In this world the site becomes the 'ven', buyers are 'punters', the 'flash* is the front of the stall, and so on. In what follows we retain this language. This we do not only because this is the language which constructs and gives meaning to the space of the car-boot sale, but also because, for us, these coded qualities resonate strongly with many of the oppositional characteristics of the car-boot sale which we examine in this paper. Recognising that not everyone will be familiar with such terminology, we add conventional explanations of terms where necessary in parentheses. (5) Site surveys were conducted between May and July 1995 at six different car-boot-sale sites in Nottinghamshire and South Yorkshire, two of which coincided with sites of participantobservation field research. Ideally there would have been a complete coincidence of sites here, and initially we had intended this. However, as we proceeded simultaneously with the participant-observation phase of the research, we increasingly came to regard site surveys as in some senses counterproductive, if not undermining of the (more important) participant-observation phase of the research. Not only were clipboards and questionnaires readily (and repeatedly) identified with authority [in the form of local authority trading-standards officers, the police, or 'snoops' (Department of Social Security informers)], but the person(s) performing this activity were labelled clearly as not participating in, and excluded from, the boot sale. Given the frequency with which participant observation was being conducted at particular sites, to turn up in the guise of survey researchers and then anticipate being able to revert to conducting (continued over)
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The result, we suggest, is not only a detailed investigation of the car-boot-sale phenomenon but is meant to accord with the pleas of Campbell (1995) and Miller (1995) when they call for research on consumption to be grounded empirically in the actions and lives of 'ordinary people': "... we require extensive knowledge as to consumption as action in context ... consumption research needs to be more not less intrusive, more not less analytical, more not less observational. To understand consumption imperatives means being saturated in the lives of ordinary people" (Miller, 1995, page 51).(6) The paper is constructed in terms of the development of our own understanding of the car-boot-sale phenomenon. We begin, therefore, by positioning the car-boot sale in terms of recent theoretical debates on consumption. We then move on to discuss and challenge two of the most commonly articulated myths about car-boot sales—their identification with dodgy goods and dodgy dealers, and their purported close connection with recessionary Britain. After destabilising these myths we demonstrate the importance of local geographical knowledge and accumulated knowledge to participation in the boot sale, and examine the connections which this is frequently alleged to have with competitive individualism. After this we present another reading of the space of the boot sale — one which stresses the importance of transgression, performance, spectacle, and laughter. In the concluding section we highlight the connections between the car-boot sale and the Bakhtiiiian notion of carnival (Bakhtin, 1968; Stallybrass and White, 1986). 2 Positioning the car-boot sale Although car-boot sales are clearly connected to other spaces of second-hand exchange, one of our primary concerns in focusing on these sales has been to use this phenomenon to make an intervention in the contemporary literature on consumption. As we have argued elsewhere (Gregson and Crewe, 1994), much of this literature displays a fixation with the mall, to the extent that these 'cathedrals' of consumption have become identified as the site of contemporary consumption and as emblematic of (post)modernity (Butler, 1991; Chaney, 1990; Clarke, 1991; Fiske, 1989; Goss, 1992; 1993; Hopkins, 1990; 1991; Morris, 1989; Shields, 1989; 1992; Zukin, 1991). To a degree then, what we are seeing here is a replication of the identification of the department (5) continued participant observation seemed to us a highly dubious research strategy. In short we felt that our 'cover' would have been irreparably blown. Site surveys, therefore, were conducted primarily by the research assistant on this project, Beth Longstaff, and by Gavin Andrews. The sites on which the survey work is based include the various types of boot sale identified in the pilot stages of our field research, whereas respondents were drawn at random from those leaving the six sites over a continuous 2-3-hour period. This yielded a total of 263 respondents, of whom 248 (94.3%) had bought at least one item that day. These 248 form the basis for the analysis in this section. Given the number of survey responses and the different characteristics of our survey team, we would suggest that potential bias towards surveying particular types of boot-sale goer was minimised, and that the survey is representative of broader patterns of boot-sale expenditure and purchasing. Certainly this is suggested by the degree to which these findings triangulate with those from the participant-observation phase of the research. (6) To claim that our research is 'saturated' in the lives of ordinary people would, admittedly, be stretching things a bit far. Rather, our participant observation is based in the site of the carboot sale and, as such, has strong parallels with Crang's (1994) participant-observation work within a restaurant in southeast England. The fact that this research is grounded in the site of the car-boot sale, rather than in 'the round' of participants' lives, also has clear implications. It means, for example, that we are unable to say anything here about one critical issue—namely how people mesh together the car-boot sale with other sites of purchase (see section 2). Despite these shortcomings, however, the work is a clear illustration of what we interpret Miller to mean in his calls for studies of consumption as action in context.
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store and the arcade with modernity (Benjamin, 1973; 1986; Buek-Morss, 1989; see also Benson, 1986; Blomiey, 1996; Bowlby, 1985; 1987; Nava, 1995; Wilson, 1992; WoolfT, 1985; 1990): particular historical conjunctures are associated with, and in some cases defined in terms of, specific sites which themselves are taken to encapsulate the activities of consumption in particular epochs, Such readings have, of course, been challenged by those who stress that consumption is not an activity confined to the act, moment, and hence site, of purchase (Jackson, 1993; Jackson and Thrift, 1995; Miller, 1987). And in consequence in these readings, spaces of consumption extend to encompass those spaces within which things are used, displayed, modified, transformed, and so on and so forth, notably the home. Important as these arguments are, however, few have challenged the preeminence of the mall (and previously the high street) as the site of purchase, We, however, maintain that the act of purchase is something which, in the contemporary conjuncture, frequently occurs in a range of spaces; spaces which certainly include the mall, and which still (contrary to some popular representations) involve the high street (NEDO, 1988), but which also embrace other sites — the home, or even the workplace, in the case of mail-order purchase and, in the case of car-boot sales, fields, car parks, and open spaces. Rather than being identified with single particular sites, then, contemporary consumption is characterised by acts of purchase which span and include various contrasting sites (Jackson and Thrift, 1995). Indeed, we would suggest that such heterogeneity is one of the defining features of contemporary purchasing activities, and correspondingly needs to be acknowledged in consumption research and accounted for by this. Focusing on the world beyond the mall is imperative to achieving such analyses, and we see our analysis of the car-boot sale as a first step in this direction. A second reason why the car-boot-sale phenomenon is of importance to contemporary debates on consumption relates to the ways in which the Consumer' constitutes, shapes, and in many senses produces, the car-boot sale. Devoid of the fixtures, trappings, and representatives of retail capital, and lacking spatial fixity, the car-boot sale is a phenomenon which, by definition, has to be reconstituted every time and everywhere it occurs. Moreover, and again as we have argued elsewhere (Gregson and Crewe, 1994), the social relations of the boot sale are such that participants can both buy and sell, often simultaneously. Constituted thus, free of the alleged seductions and temptations of the store (Bowlby, 1985; 1987; Dowling, 1993; Reekie, 1993; Williams, 1982) and away from the postmodern playground of the mall, car-boot-sale participants quite literally have to produce the space, and the event, which they have come to participate in. As such, the car-boot sale can be seen to be a space of critical importance for contemporary consumption studies; one which enables the investigation of the production of consumption. The above points testify to the theoretical significance of car-boot sales for debates on contemporary consumption. In later sections of this paper we turn to examine the production of consumption within the car-boot sale. However, this objective is also subsumed within another of our intentions here; to consider various readings of the car-boot-sale phenomenon and to use these to make sense of this phenomenon. Early on in the course of our research, particularly while investigating the regulatory context surrounding car-boot sales, we repeatedly encountered the myths outlined in the introduction to this paper. It is with these readings, the most common representations of car-boot sales, that we begin our analysis.
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3 Reading the car-boot sale 1: of myths, the taste of necessity, and aesthetic taste ( } 3.1 Myth one: dodgy goods, dodgy dealers, and the duped consumer As we have discussed elsewhere the dominant representation of the car-boot sale, at least as this is portrayed in the pages of the media and in public debate, is one of a venue peopled by a host of Arthur Daleys and Del Boys, and characterised by the disposal of 'knock-off ('acquired', usually by illicit means), stolen and/or dangerous goods, typically electrical goods, videos, compact discs, computer software, and alcohol and tobacco by the van load from France (Gregson et al, 1997). Furthermore, the implication within such representations, and a frequent justification for the heightened regulation of car-boot sales, is that such items are being purchased by a naive and unsuspecting public (for example, see Which? 1994). As we show below, however, although car-boot sales undeniably can be sites for such exchange, what goes on within them in terms of patterns of purchasing is frequently both far more mundane and more complex than such representations suggest. At one level, as our survey work showed, the car-boot sale can be summarised as a site dominated by the exchange of a wide range of exceedingly cheap secondhand commodities. Our work, for example, revealed twenty-seven categories of goods purchased, which covered the full spectrum of high street retail sales from furniture and bathroom suites to clothing, ornamental china, and children's toys. However, as table 1 shows, these categories can be collapsed down to reveal four primary categories of purchase, which together account for 59.5% of all the purchases made by those we surveyed. Three of these categories can be classified as encompassing basic household goods, and the fourth is comprised predominantly of books. Items such as electrical goods (5%), videos (2%), computer goods (0.5%), and food and drink (5%) then figure much less significantly in our overall profile of purchasing behaviour than is suggested by the dominant representation of the car-boot-sale phenomenon. And indeed, such patterns of purchasing triangulate well with the results of our participant-observation research, in which once again the purchase of electrical goods, videos, computer goods, food and drink, and anything noticeably suspicious was very much a marginal interest. Such findings are further confirmed by the data in table 2 in which we detail the percentage of our survey respondents who had bought from each of our twenty-seven categories. Top of the list once again are women's clothing, toys, kitchenware, ornamental glass and china, garden plants and seeds, and books, magazines, or comics. And, although 12% of respondents had bought small electrical items, only 5% had purchased videos and 1% computer goods. (7)
In using the term 'myths' here we are, of course, aware of the strong possibility that we might be interpreted here as guilty of reading things in terms of 'myths' counterposed to a straightforward simplistic notion of 'reality'. This is not what we intend, and this is indeed counteracted by the presentation of three readings of the car-boot sale in this paper. Rather, we have used the term 'myths' here purposefully and in its literal sense, that is to refer to certain tales which have been assimilated both into popular and into political consciousness about car-boot sales. Time and again, when we told people (academics, friends, acquaintances, etc, and particularly those who had never been to a car-boot sale) what we were currently working on, we were greeted by comments which indicated the extent to which car-boot sales are readily and automatically associated with rogues, dubious and/or dangerous goods, tatt (low grade and/or poor quality goods) and 'the poor'. Moreover, as our work on the regulatory debate surrounding car-boot sales also indicates, the same identical myths are propounded repeatedly in the context of political debate on this phenomenon (see Gregson et al, 1997). Along with Miller (1995), who makes similar points in relation to consumption more generally, we maintain that the purpose of such myths is to suggest that we already know all there is to know about the car-boot sale. As we demonstrate in this paper this position is easily contested, and in what follows we adopt the same presentational device as Miller (1995) in his repudiation of the myths and cliches of consumption.
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From this we conclude that, in terms of purchasing behaviour* the car-boot sale is dominated by the purchase of basic household and personal commodities. The reasons behind this pattern of purchasing behaviour are, we maintain, primarily twofold: a reflection of the relative price of commodities at boot sales, together with an intcrnalisation of the myths about boot sales as vehicles for the disposal of dodgy goods. Boot sales are well known as sites where goods can be Table I. Car-boot sale purchases (as a percentage of all goods purchased) (source: field-survey research questionnaires completed for 248 participants in 1995), Category of goods brought
Purchases from each category (%)
Clothing Household goods (excluding decorative, ornamental, and electrical) Home consumables books tapes videos computer goods Gardening items Toys Ornamental or decorative glass and china Electrical goods Food and drink (to take home) Do-it-yourself materials Sports goods Furniture Stationery Arts and crafts items Motoring accessories Other
21 16 11.5 6 3 2 0.5 11 9 6 5 5 4 2 2 1 1 0.5 5
Table 2. Percentage of respondents buying goods from each category (source: field-survey research questionnaires completed for 248 participants in 1995). Category of goods bought
Percentage
Toys Garden plants and seeds Women's clothes Books, magazines, comics Kitchenware Ornamental or decorative glass and china Household goods Food and drink (to take home) Small electrical goods Household linen goods Children's clothes Do-it-yourself materials Adults' shoes or trainers Men's clothes Tapes, records, compact discs All other categories
21 21 20 16 15 15 12 12 12 11 10 10 9 6 6
