Abstract EN:

A multidisciplinary approach allows one to demonstrate the many pressures bearing down on a group of women fishmongers. Urban precariousness, trade rules and social reproduction are all linked. The illegality of housing produces social tensions and fuels political pratonage. With the backdrop of economic crisis, trade could not start nor perputuate without the benefit of a social network. But the profits are absorbed by the (uncertain) continuation of the business and by social obligations : it makes the accumulation of capital difficult. Trapped between the necessity to procreate and to support their family, these women resort to using young girls and even girls (their own daughters, relatives) for their housework and trade. As in their mothers'days, they are inculcated with the values of hard working and submission. The marketplace is a space wherein economic and social sphere interlock : the verbal interactions express the connections between the act of pruchasing and the scaffolding structures of social life. Competition between the women fishmongers is tempered by the respect of social and religious guidelines. The role these women play in the survival of families and their bargaining experience have hardly transformed the social bonds between men and women, which are grounded upon an already set up system of male preeminence. However some of them succed in modifying them.