Multiple Modernities in the Megacity? Economic and Spatial Restructuring of Food Markets in Dhaka / Bangladesh
Final Report Abstract
The project was part of the research endeavour of the SPP 1233 on “Megacities – Megachallenges: Informal Dynamics of Global Change”. In the view of emerging supermarkets in the megacity of Dhaka, its objective was to empirically study current restructuring processes within Dhaka’s food retail sector. Three sub-projects were designed to undertake research in Dhaka. The first one examined the development of supermarkets in Dhaka from the perspective of retailers; the second one assessed how contemporary food shopping and consumption practices change under these conditions; and the third one studied one of Dhaka’s largest modernisation projects, i.e. the relocation of Kawran Bazar, the mega city’s largest “traditional” food market, from the city centre to the urban periphery. In the course of the project, an interdisciplinary perspective was deployed that integrated theoretical concepts and methodological approaches of Development Economics and Cultural Geography. Based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative empirical research methods the researchers were able to substantially contribute to a better understanding of how supermarkets emerge in Dhaka and how they transform the mega urban society. In the first sub-project, Christine Hobelsberger and Michael von Hauff examined the development of supermarkets by focusing on the constraints and opportunities of the new food outlets and by studying how they impact on local kitchen markets. The major results can be outlined as follows: First, since 2001, supermarkets in Dhaka increasingly become an inherent part of the city’s food system, but with supermarkets’ estimated 5% market share in Dhaka’s food retail, it is still too early to speak of a “revolution” to take place. The impact of supermarkets in Dhaka is still too small to evoke kitchen market vendors to adapt to or even to resist upcoming supermarkets, as it is observed in other countries. Second, supermarkets in Dhaka and in Bangladesh currently face various obstacles preventing them from further expansion at a higher pace. A comparably small customer base, immature supply chains and improper structural policies are among the most pressing challenges that supermarkets currently try to overcome. Third, it is particularly the big supermarket chains having the potential and partly already the power to become change makers in Dhaka’s food system. However, further expansion of supermarkets and their impact on kitchen markets will highly depend on supermarkets’ success in overcoming the current obstacles. As in many other developing countries, the process might speed up significantly as soon as (by now absent) foreign supermarket chains enter the market. In the second sub-project, Markus Keck and Hans-Georg Bohle analysed the process of emerging supermarkets in Dhaka by assessing how the new retail formats together with media affect the food shopping and consumption practices of urban middle class women. The study revealed the following key findings: First, in public media, supermarkets are framed as the appropriate solution to the urban consumers’ demand for high quality food to be served under convenient and hygienic conditions. The framing of supermarkets as “efficient” and “ordered” providers of “high quality” food goes hand in hand with discriminating discourses against kitchen markets, which are deemed “inefficient”, “disordered” and “unhygienic”. Second, in Dhaka, middle class consumers' daily shopping tours in supermarkets are an expression of their general wish to live out a "modern" way of life in the middle of a "non-modern" society. In Bangladesh, the notion of modernity is currently being transformed from utopia lying somewhere in future to a concrete idea that can become reality by means of concrete enactments in particular places. From this perspective the daily food shopping turns from a necessary act of self-provisioning in kitchen markets to a pleasurable enactment of modernity in supermarkets. Third, the major impetus of food shopping was the women’s concern to reduce the risk of ill-health of their children, husbands and relatives, and to promote their good health by purchasing food considered to be “safe” and “nutritious”. In the context of the recent food scandal, especially better-off consumers put their trust in supermarkets that are seen to be reliable in offering safe food. As such, supermarkets are the winners of present-day food scares in Bangladesh, while kitchen markets are put under general suspicion. In the third sub-project, Alexandra Eisenberger and Markus Keck put emphasis on the decentralisation of Kawran Bazar and asked for reasons behind the relocation remaining in the limbo for meanwhile 20 years. The results of the study can be summarized as follows: First, 1984 President Ershad declared to develop the area around Kawran Bazar into the second-largest commercial zone in Dhaka. This drive was the starting point for the restructuring of the market. Today, Kawran Bazar is a contested area, where high-rise buildings and shopping malls meet with the street vendors and tinkered market stalls. Second, representatives of luxury hotels, multinational companies, international NGOs and shopping malls with their offices in direct vicinity to the market tried to put pressure on the national government. However, a well-established localised elite – mostly land brokers, political activists, and ward-level bureaucrats – work for the maintenance of the status quo in order to preserve the political and economic advantages it derives from the exploitative patron–client relationships in place. These findings lend support to the argument that modernisation projects in contemporary cities of the Global South must be seen as contested terrains, wherein globalised and localised elites continue to struggle for ultimate hegemony. To sum up, this project focused on the dynamics that global change evokes in local contexts and thus contributed fundamentally to the aims of the overall priority program 1233. By taking the rise of supermarkets as an example, the project gained special insights into the emergence, spread and consequences of multiple modernities that are currently emerging in mega cities of the Global South. It followed basic considerations of Foucault and operationalised his notion of “dispositif” for empirical research. By doing so, it revealed an alarming unintended consequence of the current modernisation drive in Dhaka’s food system, which is a growing tendency of the urban middle class to (re)produce rather clear-cut boundaries that depart different socio-economic sections of the mega urban society of Dhaka from each other by the very act of shopping.
Publications
- (2011): Supermarket revolution in Bangladesh: Reflections from a scientific point of view. In: Bangladesh Supermarket Owners’ Association (BSOA) (Ed.): Ten years celebration of Bangladesh Supermarket Owners’ Association. Dhaka: 85–86
Hobelsberger, C.; Jessorey, B.
- (2012): Jakir - der Rikscha-Reparateur. Aufwachsen und Leben in den Slums von Dhaka, Bangladesch. In: Praxis Geographie, 42 (9): 8–12
Keck, M., Thiele, A.
- (2013): Supermärkte in Bangladesch – DFG-Projekt zu wirtschaftlichen und räumlichen Restrukturierungsprozessen des bengalischen Lebensmitteleinzelhandels. In: Berichte des AK Geographische Handelsforschung, 33 (Juli 2013): 36–37
Keck, M., Hobelsberger, C.
- (2013): What is social resilience? Lessons learned and ways forward. In: Erdkunde, 67 (1): 5–19
Keck, M., Sakdapolrak, P.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.3112/erdkunde.2013.01.02) - (2014): Case study Bangladesh – learning from others and gaining experience in an expanding market. In: Kulke, E.: The structure and socio-economic impact of retail liberalisation in developing economies. Report on behalf of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ): 14–16
Hobelsberger, C.
- (2015): Contributions and Challenges of Dhaka's Food System: The Case of Fish Provision. In: Singh, R.B. (Ed.): Urban Development Challenges. Risks and Resilience in Asian Mega Cities. Springer Japan: 469–488
Keck, M.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-55043-3_24) - (2015): Resilienzpotenziale traditioneller Lebensmittelhändler in Dhaka vor dem Hintergrund aufkommender Supermärkte. In: Endreß, M., Maurer, A. (Hrsg.): Resilienz im Sozialen. Theoretische und empirische Analysen. Springer VS, Wiesbaden: 181–206
Keck, M.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-05999-6_8) - (2015): Supermärkte als Sehnsuchtsorte: Zum Wandel von Einkaufspraktiken in Dhaka, Bangladesch. In: Sippel, S., Reiher, C. (Hrsg.): Umkämpftes Essen: Produktion, Handel und Konsum von Lebensmitteln in globalen Kontexten. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen: 292–316
Keck, M.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.13109/9783666301704.292) - (2015): The Blight in the Center. Dhaka’s Kawran Bazar in the Context of Modern Space Production. In: Asien, 134 (1): 95–120
Eisenberger, A., Keck, M.
- (2015): Megacities as risk areas – theories and scales of vulnerability and resilience. In: Kraas, F. et al. (Eds.): Megacities - Megachallenge: Informal Dynamics of Global Change. Borntraeger, Stuttgart: in print
Keck, M.
- (2015): The Food System of Dhaka between Global Trends and Local Dynamics. In: Kraas, F. et al. (Eds.): Megacities - Megachallenge: Informal Dynamics of Global Change. Borntraeger, Stuttgart: in print
Etzold, B., Hobelsberger, C., Keck, M.
