Slow Living & old market

On a grey and bitterly cold early Saturday morning at Dunedin's weekly farmers' market we struggle with our bags of shopping as we make our way awkwardly through the crowded pathway. As we do we cannot but think of the new, shiny supermarket that has opened this week down the road from where we live. Its well- lit, warm interior beckons and it prompts us to wonder why we are here rather than there. As we do, we pause for a moment and take in the scene around us: the bustling stalls selling local fruit and vegetables, people tasting the organic pork sausages, the smell of coffee in the air, as well as much talk and laughter. We know we are putting up with the cold because we are committed to local food systems but we are also here because we enjoy the the sensory nature and the sociality of this space. There is a quality to this kind of space that distinguishes it from many other everyday experiences of space, including the new supermarket. Such an observation firstly reminds us that places are not just particular physical sites but they are also constituted as settings of interaction. Secondly, the material specificity of the farmers' market is appealing because it is different from, and challenges, conventional experiences of space in the global everyday: culture, traditionally thought of as bound to locality, is now derived from more abstract, deterritorialized contexts and relations. What implications does such a deterritorialized existence have for any conceptualization of the spaces of slow living? We will argue in this section that the concept of 'place' retains a significance in the global everyday and that deterritorialization paradoxically can contribute to a revitalization of the site of 'the local'. Modernity has initiated fundamental changes in the relationship between space and place.

Quote taken from "Deterritorialization, the Local and Place ", Slow Living.

Full Reference:
Parkins, Wendy & Craig, Geoffrey. [2006], Slow Living, UNSW Press