On the beach : informal street vendors and place in Copacabana and Ipanema, Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

Copacabana and Ipanema, the reknowned beaches of Rio de Janeiro, form a visual metonymy with the city that carries symbolic and real currency within interconnected cultural, spatial, and material economies. These two beaches are pivotal in the construction, communication, and regulation of Rio's place-image (Shields, 1991) as a laid-back yet dynamic pleasure-ground for the expression and consumption of local carioca culture. The representation of Copacabana and its more upmarket neighbour Ipanema through social media, amateur and professional photography, film, and advertising is equally crucial to experiencing the place as any embodied encounter with the extraordinary, as well as prosaic, elements of the 'Copa-nema' conjection. This chapter explores how the presence of street markets and vendors, licensed and informal, contributes to or inhibits visual and embodied narratives of place, particularly those that present the beaches as sites of/for consumption. In doing so, it considers the discursive situating and treatment of informal street vendors along Copacabana and Ipanema beaches, and how this complex of informality, market, and place organizes or disorganizes discursive representation. This analysis is informed by fieldwork carried out in May and June 2013, along the orla (or waterfront precinct) at Copacabana and Ipanema, and in the suburbs proper that service the beach