From Curated Commerce to Hybrid Communitas: Interaction Ritual Chains as a Catalytic Mechanism in Urban Creative Bazaars

Amid urban alienation and digital loneliness, creative bazaars have emerged as curated leisure spaces that can foster authentic social connections. Although such commercial settings can generate communitas, which refers to temporary equal fellowship beyond ordinary social stratification in liminal contexts, the micro-sociological processes involved remain underexamined. Therefore, integrating Turner’s communitas theory with Collins’s interaction ritual chain theory, we conducted a case study of a Shanghai creative bazaar that involved data collection via participant observations and 21 semistructured interviews. Our findings, captured in a three-stage process model, demonstrate how commercial curation via ticketing, vendor screening, and thematic design constructs a liminal arena. Therein, structured commercial rituals and emergent unstructured rituals synergistically catalyze ritualistic interactions. These interactions ultimately produce a hybrid communitas, which refers to a phenomenon in which institutional structure generates instead of suppresses spontaneous emotional unity. Extending communitas theory, the concept offers principles for designing urban leisure spaces and provides a conceptual framework for harnessing commerce to rebuild social capital and enhance urban social well-being.