Unnoticed history: the flea market as a place, source, and problem of historical research

This article is devoted to the problems of studying the flea market as a place of alternative, unprofessional and unofficial treatment of the past. The authors question the reasons historians, in comparison with economists, sociologists, anthropologists and psychologists, have little interest in the phenomenon of the flea market. The article outlines historiographical, source, and methodological guidelines for studying the flea market. It address questions about the potential for its special historical study and about the scarcity of sociological tools for studying it as a historical object. The weakness of the sociological conceptualization of the flea market is, according to the authors, primarily in exaggerating the public components of this «private-public» institution. As the article shows, the flea market is worthy of interpretation as an important historical source. It is a kind of mirror of society and an underestimated object for studying communication, loneliness, poverty, and cultural transfer. It is also a testing ground for an alternative, unofficial treatment of the past by ordinary people. Finally, studying the flea market can make an important contribution to the solution of special historical questions, such as historical representation. Thus, by definition, the flea market should be an object of study by specialists in the history of everyday life, memory, experience, and public history.