Food Stalls in Saint - Petersburg: the Analysis of Rules, Interactions and Identities in the Retail Market

This study is devoted to the study of the ideas of people for hire in the stall and stall owners about the "social" structure of the stall market in St. Petersburg (rules, interaction, identity). In addition, how these social manifestations help representatives of the sphere to maintain work/business and exist in the realities of the changing market of retail street trade. As for the theoretical and methodological basis of the study, its theoretical framework is modern approaches to market research: mainly network, as well as cultural. The main focus of the analysis will be on the identification of interactions between participants (network approach) and identities (cultural approach) existing in the context of state rules/trade restrictions. In the empirical part of the work, the main method of the study was a semi-structured biographical interview with vendors and owners of stalls in St. Petersburg, and an additional method was a qualitative content analysis of the Russian media. The results of the study showed a "social portrait" of the stall market as part of the global economy, and the work illustrated the key social features of the business in the representation of traders – focus on "survival", participation in the "shadow", illegal business, and a large system of interactions between members of the sphere, changing rules and representation of relevant business identities.