Street hawker as Stranger

The purpose of the present study is conducted is understanding the existence of street hawkers in urban spaces. Conventional research on street hawking has always been held in a pathological framework with the purpose of policy making and organization, while the understanding of the existence and nature of the street hawker, and his relationship with the form of social relations in space, has received less attention. Hence, dealing with street hawking is trapped in a cycle of organization, legislation, and policy-making that often fails. The main idea of this study is that the existence of the street hawker can be explained by Simmel's stranger due to its spatial features, and it is tied to a kind of externality, borderline and fluidity. Therefore, his/her existence and presence is always a place of conflict and tension; because it establishes a relationship between the logic of interests, space and power. The method of the research is a combination of documentary and ethnographic studies. By examining a set of approvals and laws as well as conducting ethnographic interviews in the Valiasr crossroad, an attempt has been made to analyze the social and spatial existence of the street hawker in this area and to present a different conceptual formulation of the street hawker as the stranger.