The Bargain,the Knowledge,and the Spectacle: Making Sense of Consumption in the Space of the Car-Boot Sale

We are concerned with making sense of the car-boot sale as an empirical and theoretical phenomenon. The paper is based on participant-observation field research, in-depth interviews, and site surveys and we start by challenging two of the most commonly held myths about car-boot sales; that these events arc all about ‘shady rogues’ disposing of volumes of dodgy gear onto an unsuspecting public, and that a preponderance of cheap goods means that car-boot sales are dominated by ‘tatt’ and disadvantaged sectors of society. Having examined patterns of purchasing within the car-boot sale, we consider how car-boot-sale goers themselves construct and participate within the space of the boot sale. At one level, this construction is shown to involve the use both of accumulated and of local knowledge and to be open to interpretation as illustrative of competitive individualism, Another reading of the car-boot sale, however, and one central to understanding the enduring popularity of this phenomenon, is its transgressive nature. The space of the car-boot sale is argued to be one where people come to play, where the conventions of retailing are suspended, and where participants come to engage in and produce theatre, performance, spectacle, and laughter. We go on to examine the connections between the car-boot sale and the Bakhtinian notion of carnival, arguing that the car-boot sale needs to be read in multifarious ways: as a liminal space which encapsulates the carnivalesque, the festive, and the popular, which subverts convention and yet which, through its celebration of the free market and the unshackled individual, embraces facets of the dominant order. We then move on to comment on the broader significance of the car-boot-sale phenomenon for studies of consumption.