Fatal encounters: shopkeepers, neo-populism, and the exclusionary city

ABSTRACT The present article analyzes the role that shopkeepers play in the life of cities in terms of space production, cultures, and policies on the use of public space. Shopkeepers are seen as the co-promotors of a revanchist culture that affects liberties in contemporary cities. In the light of such premises, the present theoretical study inquires into the intertwinements between this group and the dominant populist political offer. The combination of power of influence, sense of loss, and exposition to political offers that promise to give back stability, by recreating known worlds made of traditional hierarchies, roles. and sentiments, all of them situated in the locality, appears as the recipe for the re-proposition of historical authoritarian alliances that participated to the making of the contemporary exclusionary city.