Merchants in the City of Art: Work, Identity, and Change in a Florentine Neighborhood

by Anne L. Schiller

Overview

This lively and engaging ethnography, written and designed with students in mind, uses the experiences and perspectives of a set of long-time market vendors in San Lorenzo, a neighborhood in the historic center of Florence, Italy, to explore how cultural identities are formed in periods of profound economic and social change.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442634626
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press, Higher Education Division
Publication date:	03/30/2016
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Anne Schiller is Professor of Anthropology at George Mason University and Fulbright-Con Il Sud Visiting Professor at the University of Salento, Lecce, Italy. She has conducted research and published extensively on identity and social movements in Italy and Indonesia. She is also active in the field of international education, and writes and presents on issues of cross-border collaboration among universities.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

1. San Lorenzo Neighborhood and Its Globalized Market

A Marketplace in Transition
Migrations and Complications
Civic Administration and Politics in San Lorenzo
Fieldwork as an Apprentice Vendor
Marketplace Performance in the Theater of Sales
Some Dilemmas of Fiorentinità

2. A Mercantile Neighborhood across Time

A City of Merchants
San Lorenzo in Medieval and Medicean Times
Old, New, and Newer Markets
From Traveling to Stationary Peddlers
Diversity in the Most Cosmopolitan Part of the City
Choosing the Right Vendor
Identity and Heritage in a World Heritage Site

3. Lives and Livelihoods on Silver Street

How Some Vendors Got Their Start
Merchants and Their Merchandise
Finding Work in San Lorenzo
Competition in Close Quarters
The Best Work
Customer Relations
Making Cents in San Lorenzo

4. Into the Heart of Florence

Long-Term Vendors and Newcomers
Fixed Merchants and Infringers
Unlicensed Vending in the Marketplace
Talking to the Neighbors

5. Saving San Lorenzo

A Neighborhood Association
The Saint Orsola Project and the Search for "Monna Lisa"
Tsunami on the Market Stands
Fiorentinità and Its Discontents

6. Fiorentinità in a Post-Florentine Market

Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Walter Little

Merchants in the City of Art visits the quotidian side of Florence beyond Renaissance art and architecture to illuminate a fascinating portrayal of history and uncertainty. In a mélange of global tourists, immigrants, and shifting ideas about heritage, Schiller artfully describes the complex politics that mutually threaten, change, and maintain the vibrancy of the San Lorenzo marketplace and the neighborhood surrounding it.

Michael Digiovine

This fascinating and accessible ethnography provides an insider's look at Florence's San Lorenzo market—one of Italy's most well-known, and traditional, local marketplaces. Like markets throughout Italy, San Lorenzo is undergoing rapid change, and even decline, as the country deals with immigration and globalization pressures, and Schiller effectively captures both the romanticism and the conflicts involved. We tend to forget that iconic sites like San Lorenzo are living things, and that they, too, undergo shifts that reflect the transformations and tensions of the time. This book reminds us of this fact in an empathetic and nuanced way.

Editorial Reviews

Like Schiller, I, too, love Florence and have visited it many times, and taught there as well. So I feel very confident in saying that hers is a well-done book, her portrait of the San Lorenzo Market exactly the one I know, too. She cites all the relevant experts: Barth, Bourdieu, Geertz, Goffman, Herzfeld, Kertzer, Turner, as well as many more recent Italian articles and books on Florence. Her knowledge of spoken Italian, particularly its proverbs, appears extensive.

Gloria Nardini