Intersectionality and Marketplace as Utopia: Examining How Women Market Traders Manage Life Demands in Subsistence Marketplaces

This dissertation focuses on women market traders working in Fijian subsistence marketplaces --- women who have to balance seemingly never-ending and conflicting demands and constraints. It focuses on subsistence women market traders because they are essential to the exchange and marketplaces that moves the country's economy forward and sustains the well-being of the locals. The dissertation is unique in that it examines the lives and struggles of women market traders through the lens of consumer research, seeking to understand their lives as women and as consumer-merchants. In addition, the dissertation is theoretically innovative because it brings together two domains of consumer behavior research --- intersectionality and marketplace as utopia --- to make manifest that utopia --- an indeterminate space that causes ambivalence and tension for many --- is in turn a source of healing and solace for women market traders. The research findings reveal that women market traders manage an inherently unstable indeterminate space to help them navigate and overcome intersectionality-induced discrimination, exclusion, and oppression. They further show that the women are able to overcome forces that seem overwhelming to outsiders, and to redirect the indeterminacy of utopian marketplaces to their advantage. Further, the dissertation presents insights on theory, practice, and policy aimed at elevating the well--being and quality of life of individuals living in subsistence and beyond.