Market Resistance in Developing Nations: The Sustenance of Gaucho Consumer Culture in Brazil

Abstract

Legendary cowboys known as gauchos gained notoriety in South America during the period of colonization in Latin America. Although the gaucho cowboys were renegades in their origin, a widespread resurgence of popular interest in their tradition emerged in the 20th century among the inhabitants of the Brazilian State of Rio Grande do Sul (Oliven 1996; Jacob and Jaksic 2011). Enthusiasts created a formal structure, the Gaucho Traditionalism Movement—GTM, with the expressed purpose to re-create and preserve local traditions associate with a rural and agriculturally sustainable lifestyle. GTM activities involve cultural events and artifacts recognized to be gaucho cultural symbols, the consumption of which contributes to preservation the community imaginary face the cultural discontinuities and (post)colonial legacies in Latin America (Canclini 1995; Martin-Barbero 1993). Situating the study of market resistance in the cultural and post-colonial context of contemporary Gaucho Culture in Brazil, we explore consumers’ efforts to preserve a localized way of life and culture against the pressures for assimilating a dominant, larger national or international cultural and economic threat using the market structures. Adopting an ethnographic research design, we focus on the discourses and practices of consumers who participate in the GTM events and activities. These citizens live in the Rio Grande do Sul region of Brazil, a predominantly urban and modern scenario. However, it is precisely through their consumption activities in participating in the events and in products associated with gaucho symbols that they keep in touch with and reproduce the gaucho lifestyle. Findings attempt to describe the consumers’ support of an alternative and local market structure as a form of disseminates cultural resistance practices, even without leaving the mainstream market. We observe the sustenance of gaucho culture in consumption as a dialectical process that involves multiple agents’ interactions in a localized and cyclical valorization of market activities. The market becomes a strategic place where consumers act with GTM members and commercial agents to re-signify, enact, and legitimate gaucho cultural elements.