The marketplace as a context for cultural hybridization, syncretism and creolization in the american continent

Abstract

Industrialization and globalization processes across the american continent, have led to cultural homogenization and hybridization, as traditional expressions are affected by global influences and tendencies. These globalizing effects tend to uniform and menace local identities and folklore, putting them on risk of disappearance. Facing these tendencies, traditional marketplaces have become a cultural reserve and resistance space against modernization and homogenization, as a collaborative and participatory effort by manufacturers, merchants, consumers and visitors, who collectively struggle to preserve their cultural expressions, including handcraft, alimentary heritage, religious and superstitious beliefs, medicine and other traditional practices. This paper is envisioned to recognize the value and importance of popular markets or marketplaces in the american context, as a preservation space for a series of traditional practices, customs and beliefs, evidencing assorted sociocultural phenomena, through a wide range of products, artifacts and paraphernalia. Based on direct experience, photographic record, and assorted theoretical perspectives, it is possible to develop a series of taxonomic approaches, regarding the products and practices available in these markets, facilitating the identification of diverse multicultural processes and phenomena. As a result, this research has allowed to identify particular and unifier aspects across a sample of markets in Colombia, with supplementary explorations in the USA, Panama and Ecuador. These continental referents help recognize a series of geographic, economic and sociocultural factors that get materialized through a wide offer of products and artifacts.