- Gregory Bateson, Anthropology of Time, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Sociology of the Middle Classes, Post-Socialism, Politics And Planning In African Cities, and 3 moreGlobal urban studies, Development studies, urban informality and livelihoods, and Urban theory, theories of urban informality, urban studiesedit
- I'm a human geographer with an interest in urban informality in Africa.edit
In the midst of widespread urban deprivation, African governments increasingly give priority to large-scale ultra-modern urban projects, intended to increase national income and propel their urban ...
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Recent decades have witnessed deepening processes of informalization and casualization as growing numbers of Africans rely on economic activities outside state regulation, something widely evident in urban areas. Converging multiple... more
Recent decades have witnessed deepening processes of informalization and casualization as growing numbers of Africans rely on economic activities outside state regulation, something widely evident in urban areas. Converging multiple dynamics have resulted in new floods of entrants into the informal economy, including a great expansion in self-employment. Juxtaposed to this are the more long-standing informal activities through which popular groups have coped with the lack of formal work opportunities and basic services. Paralleling these trends is, in some contexts, a resurgence of attempts to bring segments of the informal economy under some form of state regulation. This may be interpreted as selective drives towards some kind of formalization, a development that has also gained impetus in international development discourse. These developments confirm that the boundary between what is and is not to be regulated by the state (or between what is and is not considered legitimate eco...
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Introduction: re-spatialising urban informality : reconsidering the spatial politics of street work in the global South
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This Article examines the ways in which market vendors in Kampala, Uganda, responded to plans to redevelop their markets through the concession of long-term leases to private investors. These plans met with massive resistance from the... more
This Article examines the ways in which market vendors in Kampala, Uganda, responded to plans to redevelop their markets through the concession of long-term leases to private investors. These plans met with massive resistance from the marketers, with significant outcomes. The Article uncovers how the marketers actively negotiated a “gray space” between legality and illegality and creatively used the law, with a view to asserting themselves as the legitimate rulers of their markets. It shows how the marketers engaged in highly diverse modalities of struggle, stretching across the legal/illegal boundary. They organized in multiple configurations which were flexible, hybrid and mutant in character, rather than being fixed in particular organizational categories. In their struggles, the marketers engaged in shifting alliances and with a disparate range of political allies. Their politics were fluid, untamed and pragmatic, but also contradictory and fractured. This flexibility and pragma...
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Street workers may engage in multiple forms of agency. This paper conceives of such forms in terms of a continuum where some forms may evolve into others, dissolve or revert to previous ones. Closer attention is given to the dynamics and... more
Street workers may engage in multiple forms of agency. This paper conceives of such forms in terms of a continuum where some forms may evolve into others, dissolve or revert to previous ones. Closer attention is given to the dynamics and trajectories of street workers’ organizations, which vary widely and are poorly understood. In particular, the paper addresses the prospects for and limitations of transformative and sustained collective organization among street workers. Both external and internal processes influencing the dynamics of street workers’ organizations are examined, such as the economic and political context of associations, the nature of their relations with political elites, the governing powers of associations, the nature of their leadership, and who they represent and exclude. This paper enquires into what accounts for demobilization, regression and political disengagement. It also explores whether participation in wider associative networks and collaborations can help overcome some of the fragilities of street workers’ associations, promote their sustainability and broaden their visions. The discussion draws upon literature addressing collective organizing among street workers in a wide range of urban contexts in Africa and the global South.
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Global informalization and the rise of 'glocal' movements Large numbers of urban dwellers in Africa and other developing regions rely today on some kind of informal work for survival. While economic informality, in various and... more
Global informalization and the rise of 'glocal' movements Large numbers of urban dwellers in Africa and other developing regions rely today on some kind of informal work for survival. While economic informality, in various and shifting forms, has been a long-standing feature of African cities, it has experienced a rapid expansion in the last decades. New groups are joining the informal economy, while conditions deteriorate for large numbers. This paper explores the multiple spatialities involved in the dynamics of urban informal economies. Informalization and the accompanying deepening of social exclusion in urban areas have an important extra-local dimension, both in what concerns their production and the responses of vulnerable groups in the informal economy 1 . Informalization of livelihoods in African cities needs to be seen in the light of trends that are global in scope. The expansion of informal work (as manifested in the casualization of labour and an increase in sel...
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Contemporary modes of urban governance involve a wide variety of actors. The present paper combines insights from several debates into a framework that considers the multiple sites where practices of governance are exercised and... more
Contemporary modes of urban governance involve a wide variety of actors. The present paper combines insights from several debates into a framework that considers the multiple sites where practices of governance are exercised and contested, various and entangled layers of relations and a broad range of practices of governance that may involve various modes of power, as well as different scales. The paper illustrates some of these complexities with an empirical study of the governance of marketplaces in Maputo, Mozambique. It shows how urban governance in a context of extensive informalisation and `democratic transition' can be highly fragmented and fluid, contesting some of the assumptions underlying Western debates on urban governance. It also questions notions of the hollowed-out state and an excessive focus on public policy.
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... I Valodia (eds), Voices of Protest: Social Movements in Post-Apartheid South Africa, Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2006 ... discussing the agency of informal actors has focused mainly on transnational business... more
... I Valodia (eds), Voices of Protest: Social Movements in Post-Apartheid South Africa, Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2006 ... discussing the agency of informal actors has focused mainly on transnational business networks, for example J Roitman, Fiscal Disobedience ...
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Urban planning bases its interventionist strategies on the reasoning that change has to be rationally managed and that control is necessary in the 'public interest'. In Africa, for various bureaucratic and political... more
Urban planning bases its interventionist strategies on the reasoning that change has to be rationally managed and that control is necessary in the 'public interest'. In Africa, for various bureaucratic and political reasons, urban planning has often been notoriously lax. In the face of ...
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* 1. The Changing Politics of Informality: Collective Organizing, Alliances and.Scales of Engagement - Ilda Lindell * Part One: The Political Dynamics of Collective Organizing * 2. Seen But Not Heard: Urban Voice and.Citizenship for... more
* 1. The Changing Politics of Informality: Collective Organizing, Alliances and.Scales of Engagement - Ilda Lindell * Part One: The Political Dynamics of Collective Organizing * 2. Seen But Not Heard: Urban Voice and.Citizenship for Street Traders - Alison Brown and Michal Lyons * 3. The Politics of Vulnerability: Exit, Voice and.Capture in Three Nigerian Informal Manufacturing Clusters - Kate Meagher * 4. Women Leaders and.the Sense of Power: Clientelism and.Citizenship at the Dantokpa Market in Cotonou, Benin - Ebbe Prag * Part Two: Constructing Alliances: Organizing Across the Formal - Informal 'Divide' * 5. Alliances Across The Formal-Informal Divide: South African Debates and.Nigerian Experiences - Gunilla Andrae and.Bjorn Beckman * 6. Self-Organized Informal Workers and.Trade Union Initiatives in Malawi: Process, Challenges and Directions of Organizing the Informal Economy - Ignasio Malizani Jimu * 7. Moments of Resistance: The Struggle Against Informalization in The City of Cape Town - David Christoffer Jordhus-Lier * 8. The Possibilities for Collective Organization of Informal Port Workers in Tema, Ghana - Owusu Boampong * Part Three: International Dimensions of Organizing * 9. The 'China Challenge': The Global Dimensions of Activism and the Informal Economy in Dakar, Senegal - Suzanne Scheld * 10. Passport Please: The Cross-Border Traders Association in Zambia - Wilma S. Nchito and.Karen Tranberg Hansen
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The study addresses the way processes of informalization looming large in the world today take shape in the West African city of Bissau, Guinea-Bissau. These processes are analysed in a historical perspective, whereby the historical... more
The study addresses the way processes of informalization looming large in the world today take shape in the West African city of Bissau, Guinea-Bissau. These processes are analysed in a historical perspective, whereby the historical imprint on current forms of informality and ...
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Shen Yuling. 2007. The Water Dragon King: Water and Land Management in Xinjiang, China. Thesis for the degree of philosophiae doctor, Trondheim, December 2007. Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Social Sciences and... more
Shen Yuling. 2007. The Water Dragon King: Water and Land Management in Xinjiang, China. Thesis for the degree of philosophiae doctor, Trondheim, December 2007. Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Social Sciences and ...
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This article addresses evolving ways of governing urban informality that increasingly draw upon the management of space. Drawing inspiration from governmentality studies, the article examines contemporary governmental strategies of... more
This article addresses evolving ways of governing urban informality that increasingly draw upon the management of space. Drawing inspiration from governmentality studies, the article examines contemporary governmental strategies of spatial enclosure and expulsion deployed upon street vendors in Kampala, in the context of an ambitious urban transformation agenda and a recentralisation of political authority. The article uncovers the complex configuration of actors involved in the realisation and contes-tation of such spatial strategies, the messy political interactions and the multiple lines of tension they generate, thus questioning simplistic conceptual oppositions and coherent categories. The contradictory agency of the vendors comes to light, encompassing both resistance and active participation in their own enclosure. The state, far from operating as a cohesive repressive force, emerges as deeply divided around the fate of street vendors, suggesting that ways of governing informality play a central role in struggles for power among state actors. The article also explores the outcomes of dominant spatial strategies of governance in Kampala, both in terms of the effects on the targeted population and of the limits of these strategies for the intended transformation of the city.
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Cities in the global South have long been characterised by dynamic street economies. Large numbers of urban residents have derived livelihoods by appropriating urban spaces in ways that can sustain their economic and social practices.... more
Cities in the global South have long been characterised by dynamic street economies. Large numbers of urban residents have derived livelihoods by appropriating urban spaces in ways that can sustain their economic and social practices. Such appropriations are, however, being reversed in many places. Previously created spaces are being reduced, tightly controlled or reclaimed by powerful actors. The spaces, subjects and practices of street work are increasingly problematised as a threat to an envisaged socio-spatial order and as a priority field for intervention. They are increasingly targeted by a variety of political technologies and practices that redefine and refashion key livelihood spaces and delineate the appropriate behaviours and subjectivities to be included. Spatial interventions are intensifying with a view to separate, remove or enclose street work practices and populations seen as problematic. These attempts to govern informality are variously deployed across urban space and contribute to a re-spatialising of informality and the redrawing of socio-spatial configurations of urban exclusion and inclusion. But these attempts are seldom complete. In many cases, street workers are able to maintain a presence in highly contested spaces or learn how to navigate the highly uneven patterns of spatial regulation in the city. This article discusses different ontologies of informality and draws on their respective strengths to propose a more comprehensive picture of the spatial politics of informality. The article then discusses related thematic areas that run through this special issue: the multiplicity of actors governing street work spaces; the diversity and ambiguities of state-led interventions; street workers’ diverse spatial practices; the contradictory nature of their agency; as well as the material infrastructures of street work.
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Making cities inclusive is one of the goals of Agenda 2030, and access to public spaces is identified as an important sub-goal. However, in urban Africa, access by street vendors and other marginalised groups to public spaces seems to be... more
Making cities inclusive is one of the goals of Agenda 2030, and access to public spaces is identified as an important sub-goal. However, in urban Africa, access by street vendors and other marginalised groups to public spaces seems to be on the decline. This policy note discusses why this is so, what processes lie behind the decline and what the effects are for groups that depend on public space for survival.