The imaginary of hawkers and traveling salesmen from Minas Gerais in the configuration of place, non-place and in between place

Abstract

This work studies the reconfiguration of space, specifically of place, non-place and in between place, of the hawkers and traveling salesmen of the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil. This is important to enable us to analyze new views about the job-private life duo, but in an inverse direction. What we call "inversion" is the externality of capital in the worker's life. This reconfigures space through symbolic apprehensions outside organizations as well, replacing the self-constitution of their space by the hawkers and traveling salesmen through work. To this end, we used the elements of oral history and of imaginary structures interwoven in the symbolic universe. The findings indicate the existence of a to-and-fro movement, in which the re-signification of work occurs by the adoption of new technologies, remodeling the relation between time and space. This is also sensitive to the reduction of privacy that is due to the controlling omnipresence of the firm. Moreover, the study found that the family sets the place and non-place boundaries in the affective relations, and it is also the main reason why hawkers and traveling salesmen choose to establish themselves in one place.