SOCIOCULTURAL TRANSFORMATION OF The TRADITIONAL FOOD MARKET:: Roles In Shaping Built Environment

Understanding how the built marketplace is made, unmade and reassembled, it is necessary to know how the worldviews of market users, sellers and policymakers are both culturally and socially constructed. Interpretive anthropology and Actor Network Theory are used as methodological approaches to explore the unwritten ritual practices, persistent traditional values, conflicts and socio-cultural transformations that underlie the physical marketplace. Hence, this thesis fills a clear gap in knowledge regarding the role played by food markets and food-related activities in the development of a contemporary African city. The study shows that spatial urban boundaries are becoming blurred and, as such, spaces are continuously renegotiated through the activities and reactions in the market network to the actions of the powerful actants, such as politicians. It concludes that the increasing globalisation of food production and consumption is undermining people's preferences for a lifestyle encompassed by traditional food markets, restricting their choices in favour of more 'modern' patterns of life that are actually unsustainable and might be unsuitable to their culture and tradition.