Sounds of the Neighbourhood: Shouting, Belonging, and Sonic Governance in Berlin’s Maybachufer Market

This paper examines how vendors’ shouting shapes—and is shaped by—gentrification at Maybachufer Market in Berlin. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2019 and 2022, I show that shouting is not only a sales technique but also a social practice through which vendors create atmosphere, build relationships, and sustain belonging. At the same time, shouting is increasingly governed through shifting thresholds triggered by complaints, warnings, and the risk of sanction. Although vendors often describe shouting as “banned,” it persists under uneven enforcement and unclear distinctions between “normal” and “exaggerate” calling. I conceptualise this as uncertain sonic governance within contested gentrification: a mode of regulation that works through flexible limits and discretionary intervention, gradually recalibrating the market’s sensory norms. Focusing on shouting as memory and performance, the paper shows that gentrification in markets is lived not only through rents, customers, or products, but also through the regulation of ordinary sounds. Attending to these sonic practices helps explain how urban change transforms place-based identities and everyday experiences without always relying on formal or visible interventions.