Patterns of Reinterpretation

Trader-tourism in the Balkans (Bulgaria) as a picaresque metaphorical enactment of post-totalitarianism

Bibliographic Data

ID2467482
AuthorsYulian Konstantinov (0000-0003-0686-6342, corresponding author)
Year1996
Volume23
Issue4
Pages762-782
Publication date1996-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Ethnologist (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0094-0496 • E-ISSN: 1548-1425
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1525/ae.1996.23.4.02a00050
OpenAlexW2063992559
LanguageEN
Citations received38
References cited19

Trader-tourism is a massive survival strategy practiced in East European countries, in this case Bulgaria. "Trader-tourists" import Turkish goods that are sold at Bulgarian open-air markets. Profit is made by circumventing customs control through the bribing of officials-a loophole facilitated by widespread corruption and engendered "from above" by the more powerful transitional actors. The picaresque role that former state employees have adopted as present-day tradertourists accentuates a deficit of legitimacy and absence of normative institutional support. Trader-tourists attempt to overcome this deficit of authority through imaginative treatment (poetization) of entrepreneurial materials in order to attain a reinterpreted form of the previous stability, normativeness, and order. [economic anthropology, trader-tourism, Bulgaria, Balkans, transition

Bulgarian · Business · Economics · Economy · Legitimacy · Normative · Order (exchange · Political science · Politics · Profit (economics · Reinterpretation · Tourism · Turkish · Balkans: History, Politics, Society · Cultural Identity and Heritage · Law · Philippine History and Culture