| The heavy environmental and social costs from the globalized food production and distribution system make the localized aspects of the farmers' market especially provocative. The farmers' market is more than a place to purchase food; it is highly contextualized, socially fertile, and reactionary. This research captures the experience of frequenting, as a customer, four working farmers' markets, one street market, and one grocery store. When phenomena of the farmers' market are collected via direct observation and photography, coded and categorized into a matrix for interpreting the farmers' market phenomenon, universal trends shared among markets begin to emerge. A phenomenological inquiry guided data collection, formation, and dissemination of the matrix into concept maps for redesigning the five markets. The maps are designed to be applied to the "real-world" context of any number of farmers' markets. |
