Through the Market – Research on the Social and Physical Aspects of City Markets

This book was developed over several years, following various phases of research conducted within the project "Sociocultural Aspects of Markets in Croatian Cities — Traditional Public Space as an Element of Innovative Urban Policies." Designing the research methodology based on post-positivist principles and the flexible nature of qualitative methodology, emphasis was placed on the so-called multi-methodological or triangulation approach (Creswell, 2009). This approach strengthens the use of qualitative methods with various sources of data and insights that transcend the boundaries of each used method: participant and non-participant observation, the creation of researcher diaries, photography, content analysis, interviews, and surveys, aiming to ensure the convergent validity of the richness of the obtained data. Such an approach resulted in extensive research documentation, with varying levels of structure and different natures of authorial considerations, generally characterized by a high degree of subjectivity, intuition, and (self-)reflection. The main character is, therefore, the researcher-participant, who, following Sanders' phenomenology (Gill, 2020), achieves an understanding of the phenomenon through the entirety of lived experience, achieved by immersing directly into the "world of the market." This book primarily documents the research process. By questioning the way we obtain data and how we build interpretation from it, it deviates from the usual sequence of procedures. Thus, although it is expected that the final publication offers main conclusions, the book abandons such an approach and takes us several steps back, rearranging the research materials. One could say that, at the end of the project cycle, the book does not close the research; its fundamental aim is to keep it open.