ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the value and constructed authenticity of “worthless” products within a specific commodity chain that operated between Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, and Porto Alegre, Brazil from the 1970s to the early 2000s. Based on a “longitudinal ethnography” (fieldwork conducted over a long period of time) that followed the routine of street vendors at the camelódromo in Porto Alegre from 1999 to 2014, it examines how low-income traders ascribe value to unbranded products through their personal engagements and interactions in the marketplace. Through this process, people in this part of Brazil were developing their own notions of authenticity that differed radically from those defined by the European-American intellectual property (IP) regime. Examining how major IP politics of value impact and confront local regimes of value including the cultural, social, and temporal milieus through which commodities circulate, the author argues that the criminalization apparatus that has enforced laws against smuggling, piracy, and the informal economy in Brazil from 2003 onward fostered radical unintended consequences; street vendors, for example, had long been trading worthless trinkets and copied merchandise in the streets.
