RT Article
T1 Truth, Vision, and the Market: Selling Religion in the Suqs of Damascus
JF Material religion
VO 12
IS 4
SP 433
OP 456
A1 McClellan, Kate
LA English
PB Taylor & Francis
YR 2016
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1570254435
AB This article examines merchants' shop displays in the marketplaces of Damascus, Syria, with a focus on Islamic texts and images. In Damascus, most merchants' businesses, from the air-conditioned to the mobile vending cart, are decorated with a wide range of religious props, photographs, posters, and texts hung on walls, displayed on desks, and nestled amongst merchandise. Though it would be easy to dismiss this décor as a kind of inconsequential backdrop, I suggest that these displays, packed with symbolism and local meaning, play roles in the selling process that go beyond mere decoration. This in part has to do with their visual nature, which allows merchants to convey important characteristics about themselves in ways that words cannot. It also has to do with their religious nature, which gives the displays the ability to transform people, merchandise, and shop space through their connection to God. In short, these displays exist as a counterbalance to the work of bargaining, hawking, and other kinds of verbal selling tactics. Though most studies of markets focus on these kinds of verbal exchanges, I argue here that the visual side of marketplace transactions is just as central to the selling process.
K1 Islam
K1 Decoration
K1 Display
K1 MARKETPLACES
K1 Syria
K1 Visual Culture
DO 10.1080/17432200.2016.1227641