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‘How much for Tolstoy?’: Materiality and bargaining in urban centers of migration

Image description: A vendor on the streets of Daryaganj, Old Delhi selling second-hand/ used books.

The image depicts a ‘chhatri’ (‘umbrella’ in English). The ‘Chhat’ in ‘Chhatri’ also means ‘Roof-top’ –– a nudge towards how the seller has creatively manipulated the built space of the street into a bazaar. The stall (a part of Daryaganj Sunday Weekly Book Bazaar) exists in a ‘parallel’ built space. The shop behind the stall is a part of the ‘proper’ built environment, is shut, and the stall exists in the margins, as an ‘excess’. However, the bazaar is at the centre for its users: buyers, sellers, and any passersby, most of who are in turn ‘excess’ to the city as migrants.

At the bazaar, the value of books is evaluated based on its condition and materiality. ‘How much for Tolstoy?’ It depends. Is it too old? Is the text legible? Where did it come from? Is it cheap because it is duplicate? Is it an unreturned library book? Was it owned by an important reader whose signature and doodles add to the book’s value, or has a school student foiled it with notes in the margins? Is it an abridged collection for school kids? Is it a rare, first edition? (And if so, is the seller aware of its higher value? Can the buyer afford it?) But, most importantly –– how does its ‘location’ on the streets (as a second-hand/ duplicate book) affect its value?

The story of Daryaganj Sunday book market is triangulated between the figures of the vendors, the buyers, and the books. But there is the larger life and the built environment of the city which contains it. The location of the market on footpaths situates it in that in-between/buffer zone of contested ownership and unruly commerce characteristic of many south Asian cities. In this bazaar, a second-hand book is an object of desire, a commodity and an object defined through specific spaces as well as an instrument of organising it. It is tied in a complex system of value and ‘valuelessness’ (given that it is also sold by weight), which in turn becomes a lens for thinking about the ‘margins’ and the ‘centre’ of the city.

Questions

  • How does the value of used books relate to the built environment as enabled, extended, and exploited by its users?
  • How are different forms of materiality entangled in the value making at the market?
  • How does the condition of the Anthropocene result in informal economies?

Readings

C. S. Lewis Institute (2010). On reading old books. https://www.cslewisinstitute.org/resources/reflections-february-2010/.

Guthrie, K. M. (2012). Will books be different?. Journal of Library Administration, 52(5), 353-369, 10.1080/01930826.2012.700805.

Fox, A. H. (1957). A theory of second-hand markets. Economica, 24(94), 99–115. https://doi.org/10.2307/2551584.

Karaganis, J. (Ed.) (2018). Shadow libraries: Access to aducational materials in global higher education. MIT Press.

Mazzucato, M. (2017). The value of everything. Making and taking in the global economy. Penguin.

Schumacher, E.F. (1973). Small is beautiful: A study of economics as if people mattered. Blond & Briggs.

Author: Kanupriya Dhingra