Travel, consumption and inequalities. Notes on the urban social question

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to call the attention to the fertility of metropolitan trips as a primary source to investigate the social urban question in the Great Buenos Aires area of Argentina. Daily commuting of peripheral residents connects reproduction and consumption practices, which are closely associated to their spatial capital and forged by socioeconomic inequality. To that end, the article focuses both on daily and occasional consumption made “indoor”, within the household, and those taking place in public spaces which at the same time work sociability areas --analyzing specifically the characteristics and uses of an informal fair that works in the neighborhood. This focus not only reveal the products traded and consumed, the territorial dimension or their exchange value, or the social uses of this informal market. It also tells much about the material and symbolic travelling capacities of social actors –in other words, about the “spatial capital” of metropolitan dwellers.