The Grocery Store as an Exploitative Niche

The boutique in Volga Plage or in Sainte Thérèse is a microcapitalist venture in a poverty ecosphere. This local economic institution shows the flexibility of the capitalist system, which operates and carves a niche for itself at the very bottom of Martinican society. In fact the boutique represents in Fort-de-France one of the tentacles of the capitalist state and is an extension at the local level of the major national economic institutions. The study of this kind of venture forces us to give particular consideration to the ‘processes and institutions of social reproduction which stand behind and support the circuits of capital’ (Dickinson and Russell, 1986, p. 2).