MARKETPLACE AS PLACE BALLET
A SWEDISH EXAMPLE
Varberg's outdoor market has operated in the town's central plaza for
over four hundred years. Courtesy of Gunvor Carlsson.
Daoíd Seamon and
Chrístína Nordín
PLACE BALLET is a phenomeno!ogical
notion developed in Seamon's A
Geography of the Lifeworld to describe
regularity of place founded in
habit, routine, and supportive physical
environment. Conducting their own
daily activities, people come together
in space, which takes on a sense of
place. Individual participants using
the same space unintentionally create
a larger placc vvith its own tempo of
activity and rest, bustle and calm.
Place ballets may occur at various
scales, indoors or out. A lounge, cafe,
o:ffice building, village square, or any
other situation where some users come
together regularly, face-to-face, may
provide a foundation for place ballet.
One place ballet is the outdoor market
in Varberg, a Swedish coastal town
of twenty thousand people located
about fifty miles south of Gothenburg.
The value of place ballet for environmental
theory and planning can be
explored in Varberg's market ballet
and in examining its role in sustaining
a sense of locality and community.
Outdoor markets have existed for
centuries in Sweden. They weré reinforced
by royal trade privileges that
forbade al! openly organized selling in
the countryside. Varbergmarket has
stood in the same place in the center of
the town for four hundred years. It is in
an open cobblestone square about the
size of a football field. It is punctuated
by one street, a fountain, and benches.
The market operates throughout the
year each Wednesday and Saturday
from eight A.M. to one P.M. Sales involve
one-third perishables, including
fruit, vegetables, flowers, and svveets;
one-third cloth and clothing, both new
and used; and one-third other items,
including paintings, knicknacks, and
household items. The size of the market
varies seasonally. It is about three
times as Iarge in summer as in vvinter
because of weather, because some sellers
work only during their summer
holidays, and because tourists flock to
Varberg's beaches in summer.
Elements of place ballet
The notion of place ballet was
developed to explore spatial behavior
phenomenologically. The conventional
assumption in behavioral geography
is that spatial behavior is a
function of cognitive mapping. Scholars
who use a phenomenological perspective,
however, recognize that many
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day-to-day behaviors are habitual and
arise from the body, which acts intentionally
but precognitively. This preconscious
intelligence of the body, first
suggested by the French phenomenologist
1\!Iaurice Merleau-Ponty, can be
called body-subject. Body-subject is the
inherent capacity of the body to direct
behaviors of thc person intelligently,
and thus function as a special kind of
subject that expresses itself in a preconscious
way usually described by
words, such as, mechanical, automatic,
habitual, and involuntary.
The body as subject manifests extended
behaviors reaching over time
and space. These behaviors are of two
types: body ballets and tirne-space
routines. A body ballet is a set of integrated
gestures and movements that
sustain a particular task or aim, for
example, washing dishes, plowing,
house building, operating machinery,
potting. A time-space routine, which
may incorporate body ballets, is a set
of habitual body behaviors that extend
over a considerable length of time.
Sizeable portions of a person's dayfor
example, gctting up, traveling to
work, cleaning the house-may be
organized around such routines. In a
supportive physical environment,
many body ballets and time-space routines
can merge to create place ballet)
\vhich is an interaction of many timespace
routines and body ballets rooted
in space. The groundstone of place
ballet is a regularity of human behaviors
in time and space. Two underlying
patterns appear in thc place
ballet of the Varberg marketregularity
and unexpectedness.
Regularity
One aspect of rcgularity in the
Varberg market is body ballets. These
regular hodily routines exist for the
market, mostly for the sellers and caretakers.
One major body ballet is setting
up. Sellers bring their goods and
materials to construct booths. Unloading
and arranging can proceed quickly
and easily because the proce<lure is
established and habitual. A particularly
important aspect of setting up,
especially for food and flower sellers, is
display, which is done carefully and
reaches the state of art in some stalls.
Stands are set up regularly at the same
location in the market, and generally
both props and sales items are placed
in the same location time after time.
This "place for everything, everything
in its place" establishes a spatial continuity,
both for sellers, who can thus
set up quickly and efficiently; and for
buyers, who are used to a particular
arrangement of goods and thus can
find them conveniently, using a minimum
of attention and effort.
After the market opens, the main
body ballets involve selling, cutting
vegetables, measuring cloth, making
change-all of which involve some
knowledge and ability residing in
body-subject. In general, these selling
behaviors are simple, but some, such as
arranging a bouquet on demand or
weighing fruit and vegetables, require
considerable skilI and sensitivity. One
vegetable seller, for example, explained
that for regular items such as
potatoes and beets she could quickly
and accurately estimate weights, but
for less common produce such as fresh
kale and spinach a scale was required.
As the market ends, there are cleaning·up
and packing routines that mark the
end of another market cycle.
Body ballets are generally part of
time-space routines, and Varberg market
reflects this pattern. Unloading,
selling, cleaning, and packing are part
of individua! sellers' time-space routines
that vary little from one market
day to the next. Earliest to arrive are
the food sellers, who have purchased
items from traders or wholesale firms
in Varberg or elsewhere. These sellers
come as early as five-thirty, needing the
time before market opens at eight to
set up and display their produce.
Later, between seven and eight, other
sellers arrive and arrange their items.
The vendors of clothing and heavy
cloth come at this time because-they
have much to unload. Shortly before
eig·ht, some sellers cluster together in
groups, speaking about prices and
other things.
Buyers are also involved in timespace
routines. Two-thirds of customers
spoken to randomly at one Saturday
market said that they shopped at
the market at least once a week. "You
walk down unconsciously to town every
bloody Saturday," said one regular,
"and become fascinated 'by the
game.' " Some customers explained
that they had a market routine that
was fairly regular in time and space:
"On my free Saturday mornings, I take
the eight-thirty or nine o'clock hus
down to the market. I start at the cloth
corner, looking at the merchandise
sold by the girl v..1ho uses her g:reen van
as a stall. Then I look at curtains at
two nearby stands. Alter that I might
want to buy glassware, so I search for
'Glassware Bruno,' who often a:rrives
late and cannot always get his regular
place. Then I stroll around, walking
every'"rhere. I stop and listen awhile to
Eddie, the black man. I buy a ticket at
the lottery stali. Often I meet people
there and we chat a bit."
A second market-goer said: "My
wife and I cycle down to the market at
half-past nine. \Ve park our bikes near
the church. Usually, we separate to do
our buying at the nearby shops,
arranging to meet at the hot-dog stand
"'ivhen we're finished. Then we take a
leisurely stroll through the market,
looking to see whaťs there. We buy
our_ vegetables-always at the same
stand. Maybe we"ll find some line berries
at one of the smaller stalls. The
market usually takes about one-and-ahalf
hours. The last thing we do is buy
fish at the nearby shop on Torggatan.
By twelve we're back home."
A third market-goer, receptionist
at the nearby hotel, described her
pattern: "I first buy vegetables at
Sixten's stall and then leave them in
the hotel at my desk. I walk back to
the market through the fruit and vegetable
stalls to the arts-and-crafts area
where I look at the handcrafted
clothes. Then I walk back to buy flowers,
stroll around the cloth corner,
then return to my receptionist job. I
do this pattern each Wednesday and
Saturday on my coffee break."
Another indication of customers'
regularity is the loss of sales for sellers
who change the locations of their
booths. Buyer routines may be so regimented
that a change in place--even a
distance of two ar three booths-may
cause the customer to think a seller is
not at the market. Here, a change in
place disturbs the buyers' normal
movement routine, and they are- less
readily able to find the booth. Sellers
explain that they take this factor into
account if they think about changing
booth locations, \vhich normally are
Plan of thc Varberg market for a typical
Saturday in July 1975.
place ballets are there? Do they work
to foster community? How might they
be started or strengthened? Are there
limits of timc and space beyond which
place ballet is no longer possible? For
example, in the case of Varberg, 'vould
a market held less than once a month
maintain place ballet? When does a
space and number of sellers become so
large that the market splinters and is
no longer a whole?
Perhaps the notion of place ballet
is most useful for the residents themselves.
People often feel intuitively the
value of place ballet but generally
have no formal means of description.
Place ballet makes one implicit dimension
of the day-to-day world more
explicit. It provides a concept that
might have a role in protecting, enhancing,
and creating environments
that generate a sense of vitality,
atmosphere, and well-being. D
Further Reading
Anne Buttimer. "Grasping the Dynamism of
Lifcworld." Annals of the Associaiion of
American Geographers 66 (1976): 277-92.
- - - and David Seamon, cds. The
Huinan Experience of Place and Space.
London: Croom Helm, 1980.
Niartin Heidegger. "Building Thinking
Dwelling." In Poetry, Language and
Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter. New
York: Harper and R.01v, 1971.
Maurice Nierleau-Ponty. Pheno1nenology of
Perception. Trans. by Colin Smith. New
York: Humanílics Press, i962.
Christina Nordin. "Varbergs Torg i Tiden"
["Varberg Market in 197,5"]. Varbergs
Museum-Arsbok z976 (1976): i11-6r.
Edward Relph. Place and Placelessness.
London: Pian, 1976".
David Seamon. A Geography of the Lifeworld:
ll;fovement, Rest and Encounter. New York:
St. Martin's Press, 1979.
Yi-Fu Tuan. "Space and Place: Humanistic
Perspective." In Progress in Geography, vol.
6. London: Edward Arnold, 1974.
---. Space and Place: the Perspective of
Experience. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1977.
Photographs by Christina Nordin, 1975-79.
Sketches by Kajsa Forssén.