The Preobrazhensky Market: A Mechanism for Preserving the Bazaar in Neoliberal Moscow

Abstract

The classic dichotomy of urban studies is the confrontation between residents / local activists and authorities / capital in the struggle for urban areas. But under this approach many elements of production of space such as practices, representations, tools of participation in urban management, and stakeholders with other interests can be lost. The article attempts to overcome this dichotomy through analysis of the urban conflict around the Preobrazhensky Market (Moscow), which has been preserved in the conditions of the reconstruction and gentrification of marketplaces for the last ten years. The author draws on the Strategic Interactive Perspective (SIP), which considers conflict as a complex interaction of different players whose goals, strategies and moves need to be untangled. The article focuses on the specificity of the Preobrazhensky Market as a bazaar (relying on Clifford Gееrtz’s concept). It is shown that the preservation of the market is ensured by a complex configuration of relations between the players with an interest in the marketplace — the authorities, the Old Believers (the market is located on the territory of a former Old Believer monastery), local and political activists, legal and illegal entrepreneurs, as well as the specificity of the bazaar influencing the strategies of all players.