Forms of living urban space: Trade, fiesta and gender in La Paz (Bolivia)

Abstract

This article analyses the production of “embodied spaces” in La Paz (Bolivia) through the economic and festive practices of female traders. It demonstrates how the movements and social relationships of these women in their day-to-day work create an embodied spatiality that blurs the boundaries between the private and the public, and between production and reproduction. It is argued that this creation of lived spaces, together with those produced through social gatherings and dance parades, reveals how the ways of life of female traders in La Paz are closely linked to the modes in which space is lived and produced.