The quiet resourcefulness of Falderos: Embodied salesmanship in motion

Abstract

This paper advances a posthumanist approach to interaction by examining faldear—a pervasive yet analytically neglected form of ambulant vending in Buenos Aires’ underground trains and, more broadly, in public transport across the Global South. Drawing on video-ethnographic fieldwork, the study shows how falderos/as transform the moving, enclosed space of the carriage into a site of livelihood through embodied, materially distributed sales practices.

The analysis challenges speech-centred analyses of (sales) interactions in language and communication research. It demonstrates that rather than principally relying on speech, falderos/as mainly orchestrate transactions through bodily movement, tactile product placement, and the spatial choreography of proximity and attention. Products themselves function as communicative agents—capable of redirecting attention, mediating social distance, and organizing temporal coordination within a mobile ecology.

By tracing how these workers’ agency circulates through bodies, objects, and movement, the paper frames faldear as a materially mediated, emplaced and culturally embedded livelihood practice, extending sensory and object-mediated interaction to the contingencies of hidden economies. In doing so, the paper redefines how communicative agency in economic interaction can be theorised, positioning faldear as a relevant case for rethinking language, labour, and embodiment in motion.