Arts , Humanities & Social Science

Abstract

In anthropology, the marketplace is conceived of as ‘culture center,’ that is, a constellation of social and cultural processes. This is the case with the New-Dawn-Biz, a periodic market in a large public university in the South. Peculiarity of the New-Dawn-Biz provokes inquiry given its location (within the confines of a university campus) and modus operandi. While literature on periodic markets and analyses of the informal economy are associated mostly with non-Western societies, the context of this ethnographic study reveals a highly organized enclave. Therefore, findings from this study suggest a link between the formal and informal economies, and how the two function within a highly bureaucratized setting to foster primarily social, economic, religious, and political interactions among student populations.