ASSEMBLING THE POST-SOCIALIST MARKETPLACE: TRANSITIONS AND REGENERATION PROJECTS AT THE CENTRAL PAZAR OF SOFIA

Abstract

Drawing on a historical-ethnographic approach that binds the socialist, the early post-socialist and the contemporary consumer capitalist period in Bulgaria I will analyse transitions at a single urban site. Jenski Pazar, the central marketplace of Sofia, is a landmark of a century-long existence, where activities in the 1990s boomed with the collapse of socialist economy. Today, with the further globalization of trade and the rise of a Bulgarian middle class, it is the last place that caters for those groups that were left out – pensioners, minorities, immigrants, unemployed – providing a variety of unique for the city economic and social functions. However, the needs and perceptions of the society at large have also been changing, calling for policies for its transformation to a middle class consumption zone. In this paper I analyze through ethnographic study the contradictions borne by the market – between imagined futures, between cohabiting social groups, between needs and renewal policies, between recent past, present and future.