Fish market

Fish market

Fish market

Billingsgate Fish Market is an attractive social space for exploring the working rhythms and routines of market life, observing interactions between buyers and sellers, and recognizing the important role of fish. Built by an Act of Parliament in 1698, Billingsgate is Britain's largest inland market and London's wholesale fish market, and has been located in East London since 1982, after several hundred years in the city. Fresh and some frozen Fish market and seafood is sold to catering firms, hotel practitioners, processors and fishermen, as well as to the public (most later on Saturday), but not in supermarkets. 

It is a self-contained site of exchange and redistribution, tightly defined in time and space. The earliest time to release the Fish market legally is at four in the morning. The market officially closes at eight o'clock, but if merchants are slow to pack up, you may still get some time to get your dinner. In this article, I want to focus on the work that wholesale fish traders, and their sales staff do in getting Fish market in your plate.

Like many market spaces,

Like many market spaces, Billingsgate is vibrant, teaming with life and livelihood, feasting and sports. The market hall is the central site of performance, interaction, movement, negotiation and exchange, and is where the business can be seen and heard. The merchants of Billingsgate are mostly whites, with more than fifty working men, along with recently established South Asian and Indian vendors. The buying and selling of Fish market is a slippery business: quite literally, and for the ways in which the practice of trade escapes our understanding. 

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It is a socio-economic, cultural and interactive process that relies on multiple evaluations, performance, practice, skills, and senses, and makes it particularly interesting for sociologists to study. I spent several months in Billingsgate, with rhythm, noise, tension, buzz, chill and chill and thrill of the place, and later interviews - with Fish market merchants, inspectors, and porters, trying to understand how business . In the following discussion, I consider three aspects of the everyday life of the market: fish care, relationships with customers, and sales temporality.

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An important part of the labor of fish traders and salespersons is to do fish to boost its value. The stands display fish specimens that are: staged ': iced and maintained in an effort to maintain quality and aesthetics. Such care requires precision. Knowing the Fish market, the texture of the meat and the pressure to apply is part of the everyday sensory understanding of fish traders, which is earned through repeated routines over the years. 

Although the fish is no longer alive (eels and lobster are excluded), it is as if it is not dead either, but in a shiny condition with water and light. In fact, the best fish is 'hard alive' - still in hardness, this 'livelihood' is due in part to the labor of Fish market traders. The fish makes its presence felt through its flesh, sheen and attentive gaze - as in the image above. 

Roger Barton, a noted fish merchant, comments: a you can see it with freshness, it's shiny, it's really shiny, it's really looking at you '. Fish merchants and salespeople talk about fish with feeling and attachment in a register of love, curiosity and beauty, in contrast to the occasional disgust in the general public - to be animated in the minds of Fish market buyers to close the deal needed. 

However, while traders try to freeze the fish as the price, just dead fish do, showing themselves capable of independent action because they are illegally destroyed, as the clock ticks Loses value, threatening the ability of human actors. To achieve your goals. Time is important. Brian Roper, a long-established and well-respected seller, comments: ar ... these are not antiques, you know. We can't, we just can't store them, [laughter] you know. Take them out later, somehow '.

In fact, fish that are considered 'unfit for the food of a man's body' (Fishmongers' Company Charter, 1604) and may be 'condemned' by the fish inspector (as indicated by 'C' on a red square of paper Has been) hunted for fish) or voluntarily 'surrendered' by Fish market. When fish - and fish traders - come under the regulatory gaze of the fish inspector, the mood intensifies. The decision of the inspector to 'condemn' the fish is a financial and symbolic blow.

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Fish market on Billingsgate is 'pair-wise', that is, in a one-to-one conversation between the merchant and the buyer (as opposed to an auction, for example). Brian said the prices are clearly posted, but they are not fixed: every is really a face to deal with and every deal is a personal deal, because I charge you, it doesn't mean Is that I need to charge the next customer X ', Brian said. Then social participation is important for how business happens. The sound of a telephone - one on every stand and a lot of mobiles - is a reminder that business takes place both in situ and beyond the spatial boundaries of the market floor.

'Your reputation is only as good as your last fish', warns Brian. If the Fish market is not paid for quality buyers, they will tell it 'back', and in any case, 'bad deals will leave a bad taste in your mouth'. There is mutual recognition of skills and knowledge of the participation of various actors in business and commitment to a shared future. 

Jim Dillon, a salesman with considerable knowledge of fish, is a 'long-term relationship', meaning 'you must have tried and keep earning your customers. we want them to come back' Therefore, the importance of trust is quality, pricing, availability and time of change. Loyalty from customers is rewarded when you get your Fish market: when there is a serious shortfall. then it will be your most loyal customers who are at the top of the list that you will get out (Brian).

Jim emphasized the importance of 'bringing the fish into the system'. 'However,' if the fish is too good to start. if someone were to come up and offer silly money for this fish, you wouldn't have to accept it. because This is another three, four, five days, there is life in it '. By intentionally stopping the fish in this way, or introducing it to specific buyers, the traders register the shift: 'You can see the fish just shining and you think to yourself, I've just got the customer who will buy it. 'This example has come to Roy's mind. It is the vision of the fish that does this, the relationship between sensory understanding and social connection. While he the customer is still in bed, has sold the fish merchant to him, Jim's colleague, Tony, chimes in excitement. Anticipation is predominant.

According to Jim there is a 'feeling' for the game and active thinking is evident in these accounts of bargaining. Jim reflects on deciding whether to move or move forward with sales: 'There are too many small indicators you just pick up, perhaps without realizing', a semi-conscious visual awareness of what's going on in the market. '' S] will take a few years to develop, 'we won't overdo it'. We can also see the ability of Fish market to make things as they do in ages. They bring a process in which fish traders must evaluate and take action.

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Often at their stand at two in the morning, Roger (pictured above) starts calling at around four o'clock, offering 'best refusal' to his best customers, updating them by ordering tomorrow and planning for tomorrow . He is managing stock, price, and customer relationships with many temporalities. Indeed, orders are not eccentric moments but processes, moving forward and backward over time. Roger recognizes the temporal character of his work and the broader setting within which he works: 'I say twenty-four hours a day - and I depend on the weather.' He enjoys plotting further, but recognizes the impossibility of management. Several dimensions of uncertainty that characterize the Fish market.

Let's say we bought cod fillets for 40 quid, and now we have to sell em for 30 quid, em has to sell, the next day you only get 25 or 20 for or em. Therefore, as it is said, the first loss is the best loss. You got fewer mistakes than you made good decisions. You can't always get it right, I mean I don't know if it's going to rain every day next week, and you're gonna stay indoors and think oh I'm not going to fish the market today, we're freezer. Will extract something from Now you are not going to the fisherman, he is not going to sell you that fish, and so the next day I am not going to sell him any more Fish market because he has already got something. '

In this reflection Roger clearly recognizes the relationship between his practices and yours that ends up on your plate.

Research into the everyday life of a fish market suggests that it is fraught with interactions and activities between people and goods and fish, all of which occur in the market. The simple feat of sales is considerable skill and ability. At the same time, significant uncertainty about sourcing fish and securing deals in the correct time frame means that fish traders live with the risk of failure at frequent turns. The stake is more than meets the eye when shopping for fish.

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