This article aims to describe some features of the everyday processes that organize work at the open street market. It assumes that symbolic interactions are the substance of these processes. The empirical study was conducted by means of the ethnographic approach in an open street market at São Paulo (Brasil). As a labor market, the open street market provides jobs and incomes for about forty thousand workers. The open street market is organized as a social network, and its main features are: to mix labor relationships with friendship, neighbour and family relationship; to be informed by tacit rules and to be sustained by cooperation and competitiveness. The processes that organize the open street market must be understood in face of the process of urbanization in underdeveloped countries.
social psychology; psychology of work; open street market; work; organizational processes; social network