Nostalgi som affektivt redskap på retro- och vintagemarknaden

Abstract

This article discusses how nostalgia is used as an affective device on the expanding market for retro and vintage to increase the value of the objects for sale and attract customers. Theoretically it draws on theories of markets as performative and constructed by the help of practices, technologies and devices and from an understanding of affect as material and relational. The reader is guided to Magasinsgatan in central Gothenburg, a narrow street crowded with retro and vintage boutiques. Four devices were found to be used by the shop owner: nostalgic memory work, nostalgic fixturing, nostalgic storytelling and nostalgic practices. Together they provide examples of how nostalgia is used as one of many market mechanisms for generating ‘a value of the unique’ and ‘a taste for the past’ (Karpic 2010) of the retro and vintage objects for sale.