Interpreting the farmers' market experience: A pictorial and narrative research design for analyzing a place

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.