In/formalization
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3065
Addressing a variety of locations and subjects across several social contexts and countries, this forum intends to stimulate novel ways of conceptualizing the inevitable interpenetration and entanglement of formalization and informalization as two interlinked social processes. Rather than proposing a new coherent definition of “informality”, we propose to consider “in/formalization” as a space of practice and reflection which is crucial for engaging with contemporary economy, law and politics and their current local and global articulations and scenarios. The forum features contributions by Stamatis Amarianakis, Lenka Brunclíková, Dolores Koenig, B. Lynne Milgram, Sarah Muir, Antonio Maria Pusceddu, Alan Smart, Mechthild von Vacano, Filippo M. Zerilli &amp; Julie Trappe.
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In/formalization
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Forum: In/formalization
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2017-11-23
2017-12-31
2017-12-31
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Filippo M. Zerilli (eds)
2017/12/31
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In/formalization
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                                               2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2017: 45-108




                                                                                               FORUM




Brindisi to the Brindisians, graffiti in Brindisi, Italy. Photo by A. M. Pusceddu.


In/formalization
Edited by
Alan SMART, Josephine SMART, Filippo M. ZERILLI

Contributions of
Stamatis AMARIANAKIS, Lenka BRUNCLÍKOVÁ, Dolores KOENIG, B. Lynne MILGRAM, Sarah
MUIR, Antonio Maria PUSCEDDU, Alan SMART, Mechthild VON VACANO, Filippo M.
ZERILLI & Julie TRAPPE.




This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © ALAN SMART, JOSEPHINE SMART, FILIPPO M. ZERILLI (EDS)
In/formalization
2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2017: 45-108.
ISSN: 2239-625X – DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3065
IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                            45




Foreword
Alan SMART
University of Calgary
Josephine SMART
University of Calgary
Filippo M. ZERILLI
University of Cagliari


   This set of contributions originates from two panels organized at the 14 th
EASA biennial conference held at the University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy. The
original call for papers read:
      The dualism of the informal/formal sector distinction has recently been
      replaced with a recognition that informality/formality are a duality necessarily
      bound up with each other. This recognition is one of the key legacies of Keith
      Hart’s original work (1973), which was subsequently neglected as the ideas were
      made workable for economic management. Bringing informal and formal
      together is increasingly common in both academic analysis and development
      policy, the latter particularly as policies encouraging the formalization of
      informality. This panel will broaden the terms of this engagement, by including
      papers that look at a range of different kinds of intersection between the formal
      and the informal. Governmental formalization is only one way in which
      informality can be formalized; corporations can also formalize informal sector
      operators, by bringing them into their corporate governance as subcontractors
      or salespeople; within supra-national institutions formality and informality are
      negotiated and enforced in the form of non-legally binding (soft law) tools such
      as treaties and conventions; NGOs, grassroots movements and civic associa-
      tions often struggle to see their practices formalized and legally recognized.
      This panel will examine a range of the various ways in which formality and
      informality intersect and interact: subordination, toleration, regularization,
      eradication, exploitation and subversion, to mention only a few of the possible
      scenarios and processes. The trajectories taken by these intersections of
      formality and informality will have a great influence on the economic futures
      that emerge in a less Euro-centric global economy1.


1. Emerging economic futures: The intersections of informality and formality, panel convened by
Alan Smart and Filippo M. Zerilli at Anthropological legacies and human futures, 14th EASA
biennial conference, Milan, 20-23 July 2016. A spin-off related panel entitled Ethnographic
explorations of formal-informal linkages in contemporary global economy and politics, was
convened by Antonio Maria Pusceddu and Jon Harald Sande Lie at the same conference.

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46                                         ALAN SMART, JOSEPHINE SMART, FILIPPO M. ZERILLI (EDS)


   Before organizing a more conventional book-length project we have de-
cided to ask the panel participants to explore some of those issues by
condensing the main points of their papers into a 1,500 words commentary,
wondering what kind of theoretical implications and policy repercussions –
if any – they might suggest. As a collection of short paper this forum is
actually an attempt to explore how we might productively rethink
in/formality today. Rather than proposing a coherent conceptualization of
“informality” per se (as proposed for instance by Kambur 2009) we encourage
reflection on formalization and informalization as two interlinked social
processes through which people, individuals and collectivities interact and
give shape to specific social dynamics in a variety of time and space
coordinates. Here we mainly draw from researches on in/formalization in
several ethnographic settings, ranging from Chalkida, a city in Greece, to
colonial Hong Kong, from Philippines, to the periphery of Bamako, Mali,
from Argentina to southern Italy, from the capital city of Indonesia, Jakarta,
to two newly admitted EU member-states and a EU candidate country,
respectively Czech Republic, Romania, and Kosovo. In order to refer to and
navigate across different social processes, scenarios and life stories we
suggest to adopt the term “in/formality” (and “in/formalization”) instead of
“informality”, precisely to prevent the risk of considering the “informal
sector” as a distinct domain, separate from the formal economy. Rather than
seeing either as a distinct domain, we see it as a “modality” of practice, or an
idiom of interaction and discourse, invariably entangled with formality and
vice versa. Moreover, while the dialectics of formality and informality are
usually observed as an integral part of the economic realm, we suggest that
we should broaden this conventional framework, in part by including
governmental processes and practices. We cannot neglect the political and
legal dimension in which in/formality appears in its diverse local, national
and international configurations. In fact, by comparing very different
processes and settings this forum explores how the notion of
in/formalization could produce a novel understanding of a variety of subjects
and social phenomena beyond the economic dimension, or not necessarily
pertaining to the market in the strict sense of the term.
   Interestingly, despite its limitations the concept of “informality” itself is
now part of a global imaginary widespread well beyond academic, scholarly
circles (Harris 2017). Practices and ideas described as “informal” are
appropriated and adapted by many institutions and local actors alike, as
Stamatis Amarianakis’ paper on the Grassroots meanings of informality in
Greece shows. In the context of the current global financial crisis, people


2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2017: 45-50
IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                  47


from Chalkidia refer to “informality” as an economic strategy with significant
political implications. Here, even if not collectively organized or discursively
articulated, the expansion of informal practices could not be simply
considered a response to the crisis but can be interpreted as acts of
resistance facing austerity politics and against taxation, the latter perceived
as a form of dispossession. A genuine interest in local understandings of
informality is found also in Lenka Brunclíková’s paper focusing on a non-
monetary zone project in Pilsen, Czech Republic, where both the organizers
and visitors of such avant-gardist social spaces strive to obtain legitimacy
and formal recognition for a number of exchange practices, alternatives to
capitalist market economy rules and dynamics. Interestingly, in Pilsen non-
monetary zone formality and informality are conceptually and practically
welded together, as suggested by the practice of “gift” understood as an
“economy of debt” in which gratuity and obligation coexist rather than being
opposite to one other. That it is appropriate to frame formality and
informality along a continuum is also part of what we learn from Dolores
Koenig’s perspective on housing development in the outskirts of Bamako,
Mali. Examining the bottom-up process of formalization of land tenure she
frames as “trans-formality”, Koenig’s paper also signals the importance of
thinking the formalization of informality – and hypothetically its reversal –
as a conflictual space where interest groups and individual actors negotiate
the process at stake and its uneven dynamics. While it is apparently
unquestionable that the creation of building lots in such “unruly places”
(Smart 2001) near Bamako will be progressively formalized under the
pressure of powerful real estate market actors and city private developers, it
is unpredictable when and for how long a counter-hegemonic process led by
displaced farmers will find ways to resist land formalization. In the absence
of adequate amounts of affordable housing it is likely that people will find
new solutions by informalizing in other ways and contexts. Ambiguity and
conflict over in/formalization is well represented in the privatization process
of the vegetable city market in Baguio, Philippines. Lynne Milgram’s paper
provides a critical account of city development as a complex arena in which
actors with different political agendas connect, oppose, interact, ally etc.
moving across the formal/informal, legal/illegal divide. Vegetable retailers,
city officials and supermarket all make use of a number of – apparently
contradictory – formal procedures and informal practices in order to gain or
preserve their ability to negotiate, impose, protect their respective economic
interest and political power across in/formalization. A similar point is
suggested by the Argentinian ethnographic material presented by Sarah
Muir. Observing new currency regulations introduced in Argentina’s monetary

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48                                         ALAN SMART, JOSEPHINE SMART, FILIPPO M. ZERILLI (EDS)


system in recent years (2011-2016) Muir conceives in/formality as a
performed distinction, or in her own terms as a process of “fractal
recursivity”. The fluidity of the dollar/peso exchange is a product and at the
same time the producer of a number of economic practices that cross or shift
the line between formal and informal. Of course this is a line never drawn
once and for ever, but constantly made and remade by economic and
discursive social practices. Uneven currency regulations such as those
observed by Muir contribute to our understanding of in/formalization as a
“recursive” process. Current controversies over “crypto-currencies” such as
Bitcoin and Initial Coin Offerings offer other examples of how even the
governmental regulation of money is being challenged by new forms of
economic organization and practice, in ways comparable to the account of
ride-sharing companies by Mechthild von Vacano.
   Albeit in different ways the contributions of Antonio Maria Pusceddu and
Alan Smart both address the question of discretion by government officials, a
significant issue for understanding formal and informal intersections within
governments. Drawing on fieldwork within the local administration of a
southern Italian city, Antonio Pusceddu scrutinizes the informalization of
labour analysing how several regulatory frameworks promoted by a post-
welfare national scheme meet in actual practice with social workers’
expectations. It considers at the same time the dual and apparently opposite
processes of informalization (e.g. precarization of work through subcontracting
or the so-called “gig economy”) and formalization (labour stabilization and
its promises, but also the pressures on informal businesses through new
forms of regulation, such as the recent demonetisation and imposition of
Goods and Services Tax in India) that workers’ moral economy – their values,
desires and frustrations – emerges and articulates with local administrators
and their discretionary policies. Conversely, in order to explore how informal
practices affect formalization processes Alan Smart’s commentary penetrates
Hong Kong bureaucratic apparatus, notably by examining the role of
government officials and their discretion when facing diverse kinds of
extralegal acts. Archival material from colonial Hong Kong suggests the need
to discard the conventional idea equating government with formality on the
one hand, and society with informality on the other. Recognizing that
governments operate through and produce informality enlightens our
understanding of in/formalization processes and their actual dialectics in
specific moments and places, and reminds us of how informal practices help
to support formal procedures when they are burdened with rigid and
impracticable procedures. Mechthild von Vacano’s analysis of the motorbike


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IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                  49


taxi industry in Jakarta and especially the introduction of the new Go-Jek
rideshare smartphone application offers another intriguing opportunity to
expose the intricacies of in/formalization processes under the influence of
state and non-state regulators. In fact, the ethnographic account discussed
by von Vacano suggests reframing the state/non-state conceptual divide. Her
commentary shows that among both we find great internal diversity,
processes and agents that question their dichotomization. In addition to
that, increasing salience of the sharing economy directly challenges the
operational value of the “informal sector” concept. In the last contribution
Filippo M. Zerilli and Julie Trappe focus on in/formality within development
studies, the scholarly field where the notion of “informal sector” was
originally forged. Their paper examines legal development as a marketplace,
not just regulation of a market, in which rule of law capacity building
programs are traded and shaped by in/formalization processes and practices
performed by “locals”, and “internationals” together. Ethnography among
both groups shows that assigning to the “global North” the role of provider
of legal rationality and formal procedures for countries of the “global South”,
presumably driven (or “affected”) by informal, traditional, and often corrupt
practices is a persistent, misleading ideological assumption (cf. Herzfeld
1992). An insider view of the actual functioning of the legal cooperation
industry shows rather that dialectics and tensions between formal and
informal practices permeate the actual implementation of the projects
beyond the local/international divide, responding to global logics of
supranational governance irrespective of the projects’ content and their
actual outcome.
   Drawing on fresh insights elaborated while doing empirical, ethnographic
research this forum intends to theoretically contribute to an understanding
of in/formality as social processes, highlighting their uneven and often
contradictory configurations. Addressing a variety of locations and subjects
across several contexts and countries, and focusing on the intersections
between formality and informality, we argue to frame in/formality as a social
process beyond economics. However, instead of proposing a rigorous
theoretical framework or a typological understanding of hybrid in/formalities
(on which see Mica 2016) we rather consider in/formalization a space of
practice and reflection which is crucial to our understanding of the
articulation of the economy, the state, the market, power, politics and the
law, and their current assemblages. We do hope that colleagues interested in
the field will find this collection of short papers inspiring for many other
possible ways to consider in/formalization as a set of practices and processes


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50                                         ALAN SMART, JOSEPHINE SMART, FILIPPO M. ZERILLI (EDS)


productive for engaging with contemporary local and global power
articulations and scenarios. With informal modes of getting things done
being ubiquitous, as every new scandal in places of power reveals,
assumptions of informality as being local, parochial, marginal and southern
have to be rejected and replaced with new ways of conceptualization the
inevitable interpenetration and entanglement of the social modes and
processes of formality and informality. Treating our political economy as
thoroughly infused by the duality of in/formalization should offer new
possibilities of transcending the distorting dualisms of mainstream
characterizations of the world.


REFERENCES
Harris, Richard, 2017, Modes of informal urban development: A global phenomenon,
      Journal of Planning Literature, First published November 28, 2017,
      https://doi.org/10.1177/0885412217737340 (accessed on 28/11/2017).
Hart, Keith, 1973, Informal income opportunities and urban employment in Ghana,
      Journal of Modern African Studies, 11, 1: 61-89.
Herzfeld, Michael, 1992, The social production of indifference: Exploring the symbolic
      roots of Western bureaucracy, Oxford, Berg.
Kanbur, Ravi, 2009, Conceptualising informality: Regulation and enforcement, IZA
      discussion papers, No. 4186, http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:101:1-20090-
      612107 (accessed on 09/09/2017).
Mica, Adriana, 2016, Towards a typology of hybrid formalities and informalities, Po-
      lish Sociological Review, 194: 139-153.
Smart, Alan, 2001, Unruly places: Urban governance and the persistence of illegality
      in Hong Kong’s urban squatter areas, American Anthropologist, 103, 1: 30-44.




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IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                       51




Grassroots meanings of informality
Resistance, subsistence and survival in the Greek crisis context

Stamatis AMARIANAKIS
Universitat de Barcelona




ABSTRACT: Informality poses multiple facets and functions in the modern economic world. In
this article I employ a bottom up approach in order to understand what informality is and
does according to my informants, understandings and explanations within the greater
context of the Greek, economic crisis.




   In this article I employ a bottom up approach to understand informality
and informal economic activities. I argue that informality provides weapons
for the weak (Scott 1985, 1976) to subsist, survive and resist powerful
structures and institutions. Specially, I focus on my informants’ under-
standings and explanations of their informal activities, namely the informal
production and consumption of goods and services which I analyze within
the wider context of the Greek economic crisis. I draw on selected ethno-
graphic observations from Chalkida, Greece, a mid-sized provincial city at
the periphery of Athens, where I conducted fieldwork from May 2015 to
December 20161.
   People in Chalkida, as well as in other provincial cities, have direct access
to nature and to food production. Almost every household is a petty olive oil
producer or has access to olive oil through kinship or social networks. In
times of crisis, olive oil production is highly valued, while many, in their
effort to supply their income seek to sell their surplus informally. Another
resource, to which many in Chalkida have unmediated, market-less access is
seafood. Many own amateur fishing licenses and small boats to practice
fishing as a hobby. Nowadays, many amateur fishermen manage to make a
substantial income out of fishing.

1. Research developed within the ERC Grassroots Economics Project (GRECO).

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52                                         ALAN SMART, JOSEPHINE SMART, FILIPPO M. ZERILLI (EDS)


   The agricultural and fishing sector, not only can provide food, but also in-
formal jobs to the unemployed masses. Informal employers claim that they
provide employment while, on the contrary, the formal sector fails to do so.
Illegal fishing activities have been intensified, while coast guard officials who
are responsible to guard and regulate fishing and diving activities are eager
to be bribed, especially after the vast reduction of their salaries. Informally
produced seafood is not only channeled to households and individuals. Many
taverns of Chalkida are supplied with seafood by amateur fishermen and
through that way informal goods could be formalized. The same stands true
for the agricultural production, such as olive oil, raw vegetables, cheese, wine
and meat, while in many cases the tavern owner might be himself or his kin a
producer of the above products.
   When I asked people who are either producers or consumers of informal
goods and services, they mostly used similar patterns of reasoning to justify
their informal actions. They mentioned that such practices are necessary to
survive, subsist and resist the imposed impoverishment of the masses
provoked by the prolonged austerity. Informally produced goods enable
people to maintain and reinforce social relationships, in other words to
socialize. Goods, such as fish, meat and wine provide an occasion for people
to gather and as they said, to be able to have fun. In addition, many have said
that cultivating the land or going fishing relieves their stress and makes them
feel productive by balancing feelings of self contempt.
   In contrast to the big urban centres, such as Athens and Thessaloniki,
smaller cities seems to maintain strong relationships with the country side
and therefore high levels of, let’s say, traditional “informality”. During the
first years of crisis, the movement without “intermediaries” 2, which set up
informal food markets all over Greece, had gained lots of popularity in big
cities such as Athens and Thessaloniki, a method which we could define as
urban and contemporary informality. Rakopoulos (2014, 2015) who studied
the movement without intermediaries in Thessaloniki, has shown the
challenges and the struggles of this social movement to construct and
sustain a solidarity network in order to provide a fair price for both the
consumer and the producer . This informal social movement required high
organizational level since it had to mobilize and coordinate consumers,

2. Their aim was to replace intermediaries who bought cheap agricultural products and then
sold dear to the end customer making big profits. By bypassing that chain, they ensured a
better and fairer price both for the producer and the consumer, while this practice was en -
dowed with a strong sense of solidarity and resistance against the imposed impoverishment
(see Rakopoulos 2015).


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IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                   53


volunteers and producers from all over Greece. However, that movement has
had little success in smaller cities such as Chalkida, mainly because most of
Chalkida’s inhabitants had already had access to food production through a
less organized network based on kinship and social relationships. That is why
hunger has not been a big issue in Chalkida or in any other provincial city in
Greece.
   Interestingly, when people use the word “survival”, they usually refer to
social and economic survival rather than to biological survival. Surviving the
crisis in my informants’ conceptualization, has not had the mere positivistic
determination of covering one’s basic needs. In small provincial cities, where
almost everyone knows everyone, survival, per se, has a symbolic meaning.
When people speak about survival, they mean to be able to sustain their life’s
achievements, be it a house, a business or their social status. It seems that
these material assets that people struggle to save have a life of their own.
   Yet, the most popular practice of informality, inherent to the formal
commercial market, is tax evasion, usually through the sale of goods and
services without receipts. Entrepreneurs and consumers justify this practice
by making arguments about mutual help, support and personal interest and
develop a polemical attitude towards dominant structures and institutions as
well as large multinational firms. The ones that buy products or services
without receipts usually pay less while those who sell informally are able to
hide income and avoid taxation on two levels. Firstly, they avoid attributing
the consumption tax which part of it they use to access the market and
sustain their businesses, and secondly, they hide income and present lower
annual budget so they have less overall taxation.
   Here, lies a strong sense of solidarity towards local ventures and people
versus faceless, large multinational firms which have been taking advantage
of the deregulated market to extract more profits. Preferring to consume in
local businesses has multiple benefits for the local society since it enables
the local economies to reproduce. Supporting the survival of small local
businesses by tolerating and encouraging their tax evading methods is an act
of social solidarity, and as an informant has put it, petty informal economic
activities maintain the social cohesion. In his view, the worst effect crisis has
had in the Greece is that the Greek society had lost its social cohesion.
   In many instances, the formal sector is governed by austerity, complexity,
irrationality, injustice and corruption makes many to go informal. People
speak about the poor services and provisioning the State offers and they
complain about the constantly reducing pensions, salaries and benefits and
the forever increasing taxation. Money they have paid to the State does not


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54                                         ALAN SMART, JOSEPHINE SMART, FILIPPO M. ZERILLI (EDS)


return to them as taxation has seized to be an egalitarian, redistributive
model. Paying fees and taxes is seen as a mode of dispossession, so people
resist, however, they have not collectively articulated and expressed a
political discourse about the covert and overt acts of their resistance. Unlike
more organized informal activities, such as the movement without inter-
mediaries in which people have produced collectively their political
discourse about their practices, often is endowed with solidarity and
resistance (Rakopoulos 2015).
   Very often austerity and dictated authoritative models are considered as
death politics, a biopolitical governance (Foucault 1997) at the EU scale
which is exercised through economic power and indebtedness. Popular
discourses around crisis include words and terminology such as economic
colonialization. Many express the view of an ongoing war: «What the
Germans did not succeed to get with arms, they do it now through the
economic crisis. They are buying us out!» is a very common statement with
which the majority of Greeks would agree. We see that resistance takes also
the form of a national, an imagined collective resistance; however it is not
collectively organized as such. This is a grassroots, non-organized, national
and therefore imagined resistance. In that grassroots logic, the Nation has
been separated from the State. The State and the government are regarded as
puppet mechanisms of foreign capital interests which make structures act on
their behalf (Bourdieu 2005). Consequently, resistance takes the form of a
political consumerism and an economic nationalism (Lekakis 2015),
informality is empowered by the dominant, formal regime which
incorporates large scale economic demands of big capital interests and fails
to serve the needs of ordinary people, the body of the nation. Combined with
the continuous revelations of corruption scandals and upper scale informal
practices, petty informal economic activities and petty capital accumulation
through informal means are justified further.
   Last but not least, informally produced goods provide the means for
various food gatherings and festivities which oppose and provide relief to the
widespread economic (and social) depression crisis has brought. In that light
this is another form of resistance, to have fun and enjoy even in harsh times,
while at the same time informality acts as a disalienative force both on the
social and the economic sphere. Actually, I have witnessed a counter stereotype
being expressed in response to the one that highlights the laziness and un-
thoughtfulness of the “Southerners” in general, and Greeks in particular, to
handle their economics. In several instances, people told me that austerity
consists of a cultural trait of the North, hence through my informants’ views,


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IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                            55


austerity is not simply an economic project, it is the cultural assimilation of
Southern Europe to the strict German standards which opens up a field of
cultural resistance as well3.
   To conclude with, informality has always been a constitutive part of the
Greek society (and economy). A deep socioeconomic structure upon which a
certain economic habitus has been constructed. The case of Greece enables
to study informality as a widespread social attitude which almost everyone
practices it in one way or another. Finally, when ordinary people speak about
informality they use the word “black money” or “black market” and non-
taxed income or to use a Greek idiom sti zoula that means to do in secret. It
seems that in the definition of the concept of informality the voices of
people, those who engage in informal activities have been ignored and are
absent in the formation of the term.


REFERENCES
Bourdieu, Pierre, 2005, Principles of an Economic Anthropology, in The Handbook of
      Economic Sociology, Neil Smelser, Richard Swedberg, eds, New York, Princeton
      Univesity Press: 75-89.
Foucault, Michel, 1997, The Birth of Biopolitics, in Ethics: Subjectivity, and Truth,
      Paul Rabinow, ed, New York, New Press: 73-79.
Lekakis, Eleftheria, 2015, Economic nationalism and the cultural politics of con-
      sumption under austerity: The rise of ethnocentric consumption in Greece,
      Journal of Consumer Culture, 17, 2: 286-302.
Rakopoulos, Theodoros, 2014, Resonance of solidarity: Anti-middleman food distri-
      bution in anti-austerity Greece, Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 32, 2: 95-119.
Rakopoulos, Theodoros, 2015, Solidarity’s tensions: Informality and sociality in the
      Greek crisis, Social Analysis, 59(3): 85-104.
Scott, James, 1976, The moral economy of the peasant: Rebellion and subsistence in
      Southeast Asia, New Haven, Yale University Press.
Scott, James, 1985, Weapons of the weak: Everyday forms of peasant resistance, New
      Haven, Yale University Press.




3. Austerity is a greek word that derives from the adjective αυστηρός (afstiros) which means
strict. In Greek, austerity is translated as λιτότητα (litotita) which comes from the adjective
λιτός (litos) that means plain, simple, self-abnegating, puritanical etc.


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IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                            57




Formalizing the informal?
A non-monetary zone project in Pilsen, Czech Republic

Lenka BRUNCLÍKOVÁ
University of West Bohemia




ABSTRACT: This paper is based on two years of research taking advantage of participant
observation and interviews with the organizers as well as visitors of the non-monetary zone
in the Pilsen region, Czech Republic. The research reveals that despite the effort to formalize
this informal activity, tension between formal and informal conceptualization seems to be
an obstruction.




   About 2 years ago my friend gave me a scarf and told «It is from a non-
monetary zone». I had no idea what a non-monetary zone was and I was sur -
prised that he was not able to explain it to me. All attempts to define the
non-monetary zone ended in other questions. Also, the describing of this
project was not trivial. The use of conventional terms did not work well. The
problem of defining the project of a non-monetary zone lies in the tension
between formal and informal spheres. As I started to be more interested in a
non-monetary-zone project in Pilsen, where it is organized at least 4 times a
year, I tried to find out in what sense do formality and informality intersect
within this experiment and how can this fact influence successful running of
this project.
   In fact, the idea of non-monetary zone is nothing new, there are many
similar projects running abroad, such as various free shops and free markets
(e.g. Really Really Free Market, Schenke etc.), sometimes labelled as give-
away shops, Kost-Nix Laden, free stores etc. The idea of free shop goes back
to 1960’s to Diggers, a counter-cultural group from San Francisco providing
free food, and organizing free music and art performances (Overview: Who
Were (Are) the Diggers? 2016). Free shops are usually considered as a method
of direct action in alternative scene and are mostly placed in squats and/or
alternative cultural centres.

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58                                         ALAN SMART, JOSEPHINE SMART, FILIPPO M. ZERILLI (EDS)


   Free shops and non-monetary zone share the same basic principle,
namely providing things without the necessity to use money. Proclaiming
the slogan “Give and Take”, anyone can come and bring something they want
to get rid of or take anything without an obligation to reciprocate. Participants
of these projects are not usually motivated by financial need but rather by
anti-capitalist conviction or/and care for the environment. These projects
aim to show that “one man’s trash can be another man’s treasure”. Although
there are usually no fixed rules except one (not to use money), it is also ex-
pected that participants do not take things so that they can be resold.
   However, the non-monetary zone tries to overcome the closeness of free-
shops through the absence of permanent space and welcome people outside
alternative scene, therefore it is organized entirely in a public space, e.g. in a
park, on a street or in cafes, restaurants and gardens. The absence of permanent
space influences a different time dimension, the non-monetary zone is orga-
nized only for one day and takes place 4-6 times a year. The interval is de-
pendent on free time of organizers as well as on whether they manage to find
a suitable place. The one-day non-monetary zone allows people to bring here
not only clothes, shoes, books, kitchen utensils, dishes and tools, but also
plants and food, herbs from their own gardens or gained by dumpster diving.
Furthermore, within the non-monetary zone, the emphasis is put on the inter-
action with other people. In this aspect, the project differs from free shops,
which often work as places where people give away or take things, but there
is no emphasis on personal meetings. The non-monetary zone is a place
where people meet, discuss, they can learn about the history of things and
can make new friendships.
   Like many similar projects, the non-monetary zone in the Czech Republic
has its roots in anarchistic movement. After the Velvet Revolution in 1989,
the Czech environment fostered an anarchist movement in the form of
Czechoslovak Anarchist Federation. The activities were focused mostly on
organizing demonstrations, squatting and publishing activities. With the ad-
vent of so-called alter–globalization movements attention was paid to an
idea of “think globally, act locally”. Despite some efforts, this idea was hardly
applied in practice until 2012 when Days of Action were organized by Anar-
chist Federation. During this event, the first non-monetary zone was orga-
nized on a street in Prague. One year later, in 2013, the first non-monetary
zone took place in Pilsen.
   Organizers of the non-monetary zone in Pilsen were theoretically inspired
by this Prague experiment, where it was held only once, however, they had no
direct experience. This is probably the reason why the non-monetary zone in
Pilsen tends to be disassociated from anarchistic origin since this is not im-


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IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                   59


portant for them and it works as a stigma which makes it very difficult to at-
tract people outside the alternative scene. However, the successful expansion of
this project also means to cross the imaginary line between the informal
sphere and the formal one.
   Although correct definition is essential for successful running of this
project, even after five years it is not clear how to talk about this experiment
and the activities that are practiced here. Some participants tried to define
the non-monetary zone during interviews, however, they changed their mind
later as it did not fit to practices within non-monetary zone. Most of them
mentioned terms like “absence of money”, “space for unwanted things”, “ab-
sence of hierarchy”, “exchange system”, “gift giving”, “autonomous space for
meeting”, and “sharing”. But it turned out that the vast majority of actors
when asking, «How would you describe this project to someone else?» were
surprised and did not know how to deal with it.
   Free shops and similar projects are sometimes called as a part of gift econ-
omy. Although anthropology has proven that the gift can take various forms,
this term as well as similar concepts describing the activities within these
projects can be incorrect. Whereas within the family gift giving can be seen
as a duty that arises from the nature of filiation, gift giving among friends
and neighbours is voluntary (de L´Estoile 2014: S70). Therefore, gift giving is
perceived as moral and valuable and tends to be reciprocated. A thing is not a
gift itself, it can be identified as a gift only in connection to its obligations
(Mauss 1990). In other words, gift is a gift through relations between giver
and recipient of such a gift. The act of gift giving therefore reflects not only
the value of the gift, but also the value of the action itself supporting rela-
tions among members of the social group (Servet 2009: 88). This relation-
ship, however, always refers to hierarchy (Graeber 2001: 29). I heard two
women at the non-monetary zone chatting about feeling bad when they
should take something without giving something else in return, they would
feel like thieves or debtors. This refers to what Gregory (1982: 19) pointed
out
   Gift economy, then, is a debt economy. The aim of a transactor in such an
economy is to acquire as many gift-debtors as he possibly can and not to
maximize profit, as it is in a commodity economy. What a gift transactor desires
is the personal relationships that the exchange of gifts creates, and not the
things themselves.
   The principle of the hierarchy was also one of the main reasons why most
participants of my research refused to compare this project to charity. They
referred to the paternalistic relationships that charity projects establish and
mentioned that charity does not allow people to participate fully in the ac-
tivities and to become an equal partner.

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   One can claim that the non-monetary zone is a kind of free giving which
is not reciprocal. «Once given, the free gift entails no further claims from the
recipient» (Douglas 2002 [1990]: ix). However, despite of receiving nothing in
return, donors are supposed to benefit from a good feeling as the giver of the
gift (Laidlaw 2000: 624). Moreover, for Baudrillard (1993 [1976]: 48-49) the
idea of free gift is a myth since this gift cannot be recognized as a gift so as
not to be reciprocated. The lack of reciprocity then leads to the fact that the
free gift creates no social ties. In other words, free gift makes no social rela-
tionships which are very important in the non-monetary zone.
   Also, other terms, such as “exchange”, “swap” and “barter”, used by partic-
ipants do not fit since they are based on the right to demand something in
return. Though, things provided at non-monetary zone are free of any kind
of demand and obligation. Humphrey and Hugh Jones (1992: 7) stress barter
is determined by the mutual desire of its participants to gain some objects.
However, at non-monetary zone one can bring something without taking
something in return. Also, nobody knows in advance what things will be
available here. The non-monetary zone is not based on a principle “tit for
tat”.
   For the same reason, other kinds of “trade” are also excluded. In connec-
tion with the monetary economy respondents often expressed some degree
of resistance. Especially the organizers of non-monetary zone accounted
themselves actors distancing from consumerism and ideas of neoliberal capi-
talism although most of them do not label themselves as anarchists. Regard-
ing the impersonal and anonymous character of money, it creates completely
different kind of relationship among persons and supports the anonymity of
transactions which is not welcomed in the non-monetary zone. In addition,
formal trade where money plays a major role is incompatible with the idea of
no-monetary zone.
   During the interviews, some participants also referred to “sharing”. But
can we talk about sharing in case of non-monetary zone? Sharing was men-
tioned by participant without being explained or even understood. They just
talked about it because they saw it on the leaflets promoting the non-mone-
tary zone. If sharing is a term usually tied to a social group, a community
which is interested in sharing, and can be defined as a common use and con-
sumption of resources, what is shared in non-monetary zone? What is the
object of sharing? Following Widlock (2013: 12) «people do share what they
value, they share without receiving or even expecting returns». However, at-
tenders to the non-monetary zone provide things which they want to get rid
of, it means they do not value them. In fact, only a place is shared in the non-


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IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                  61


monetary zone which, however, is also shared by non-visitors as it is orga-
nized in public space. Last but not least, the term sharing does not seem to
be suitable because of for-profit sharing (e.g. sharing of cars and accommo-
dation) which has increased recently.
   It is evident that an ambivalent conceptualization causes problems for
spreading the idea of this project. Non- monetary zone means different
things to different participants, such as the organizers, the attendants, pub-
lic officials and to me as the ethnographer as well. The lack of this consensus
is further enhanced by the fact that these participants come from different
political or apolitical backgrounds and can understand different terms differ-
ently. At the same time, the formal and informal division itself may be very
problematic as it is a necessary simplification of reality. In the real world,
these two spheres intersect and affect each other so much that they cannot
be separated from one another. It also turns out that we are very limited by
the language we speak and the economic environment we live in. These limi-
tations reflect the way we think about the world and the inability to concep-
tualize otherness, something unusual, informal and/or new. Our language is
determined by terms connected to and proper for neoliberal economy, or
«the mentality of the market place» (Sahlins 1974: 200). At the same time, we
are often unable to conceptualize exchange without Maussian obligations or
the right to demand a counterpart. Moreover, perhaps the contemporary
Czech environment (with constant reminding of the Communist past and the
effort to suppress any form of resistance against neoliberal capitalism which
in practice means to pursue any bottom-up projects running without the
need for money and bureaucracy for their realization) is not yet ready for ex-
periments like the non-monetary zone.
   All these factors make it difficult to perceive this experiment as a full-
fledged alternative to the monetary economy and problematize its spreading
among general public. It seems that organizers and regular visitors of the
non-monetary zone can either put up with the closeness and operate as sim-
ilar projects (free shops), or, they can keep resisting against formal rules of
today’s political economic settings. This journey is, however, risky and uncer-
tain. Anyway, probably only correct conceptualization and/or the mutual
willingness to overcome the imaginary line between formal and informal can
fix the problem of mediation of the non-monetary zone and support its suc-
cessful expansion.




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62                                         ALAN SMART, JOSEPHINE SMART, FILIPPO M. ZERILLI (EDS)


REFERENCES

Baudrillard, Jean, 1993 [1976], Symbolic Exchange and Death, London: Sage.
Douglas, Mary, 2002 [1990], Foreword. No Free Gifts, in Marcel Mauss, The Gift. The
      Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, London and New York,
      Routledge: ix–xxiii.
Graeber, David, 2001, Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value. The False Coin of
      Our Own Dreams, New York, Palgrave.
Gregory, Chris A., 1982, Gifts and Commodities, London, Academic Press.
Humphrey, Caroline, Stephen Hugh-Jones, 1992, Introduction: Barter, Exchange and
      Value, in Barter, Exchange and Value. An Anthropological Approach, Caroline
      Humphrey, Stephen Hugh-Jones, eds, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press:
      1-20.
L’Estoile, Benoit de, 2014, “Money Is Good, but a Friend Is Better”: Uncertainty,
      Orientation to the Future, and “the Economy”, Current Anthropology, 55, S9:
      S62–73.
Laidlaw, James, 2000, A Free Gift Makes No Friends, Journal of the Royal
      Anthropological Institute, (n. s.), 6: 617-634.
Mauss, Marcel, 1990 [1925], The Gift. The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic
      Societies, London and New York, Routledge.
Overview: Who Were (Are) the Diggers?, 2016, The Digger Archives, www.diggers.-
      org/overview.htm (accessed on 16/07/2017).
Sahlins, Marshall, 1974, Stone Age Economics, London, Tavistock Publications
      Limited.
Servet, Jean-Michel, 2009, Toward an alternative economy: Reconsidering the
      market, money, and value, in Market and Society. The Great Transformation
      Today, Chris Hann, Keith Hart, eds, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press:
      72–90.
Widlock, Thomas, 2013, Sharing Allowing Others to Take What Is Valued, HAU.
      Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 3, 2: 11–31.




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IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                          63




Informality as a strategy to formalize
Finding housing in Bamako, Mali

Dolores KOENIG
American University, Washington, DC




ABSTRACT: Informality can be a gateway to formality. The growing urban population of Ba-
mako believed that peri-urban land not yet deeded offered potential for future ownership.
Village chiefs collaborated with them to allocate plots, sometimes mimicking formal proce-
dures, believing it improved prospects for subsequent legalization. The very prospects of fu-
ture formalization motivated action.




   The concept of informality includes various strategies for different pur-
poses. Sometimes, informality is used to escape regulation indefinitely or is
avoided because the costs of formalization are too high or the benefits too
small. This occurred in Latin America and even in Bamako’s center-city infor-
mal neighborhoods. At other times, informality may be a gateway to formal-
ity. Informal means may be used to access goods or resources when formal
access is not possible but is foreseeable. The goal however is eventual for-
malization. This was the case in peri-urban Bamako. Land here was not yet
formally plotted or deeded, but the growing urban population saw places
they could build their homes. They envisioned a future in which the land
would be formally demarcated and they could get legal titles.

Formality and informality in African cities
   Many have perceived developing country cities, especially informal areas
inside and on the periphery, as spaces of disorder, chaos, ungovernability,
and poverty (reviewed in Demissie 2007; Smart 2006: 33). Others have
pointed out that informal areas are not necessarily either chaotic or poor. For
example, Kihato (2007: 116) argued that informal areas represent alternative
regimes to govern and regulate activities, and Ndi (2007: 22) suggested that


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they generate a new kind of urbanism, which may include alternative moder-
nities. Whether informal urban neighborhoods are considered problem or
potential, informal and formal are presented as fundamentally separate from
one another. The goal of many planners is to transform the seemingly unreg-
ulated informal into the formal, governed by state regulation and subject to
state scrutiny (Roy 2005: 148; Mica 2016: 141).
   Roy and others have questioned whether there is a radical difference be-
tween formal and informal. Hodder (2016: 117-9) suggested that the di-
chotomy between informality and formality is ultimately imaginary, because
the processes and rules of formality are shaped and sustained by informal so-
cial relations. Roy (2005: 148) proposed that informality be viewed as a mode
of urbanization, since substantial numbers, sometimes a majority, of resi-
dents of developing country cities live in informal areas. Mica (2016) pro-
posed that formalities and informalities often incorporate the rules of both,
thus are often hybrids. Trans-formality is a type of informality that occurs
when the move toward formality comes from the bottom-up; those involved
may adopt rational-legal approaches (Mica 2016: 148). Although the transi-
tion from informality to formality is by no means universal, the example I
discuss here, urbanization on Bamako’s periphery, is aptly understood as a
kind of trans-formality, where the goal of residents is eventual formalization.
   In Bamako’s housing context, informality is indeed a lack: of government
planned roads and lot allocation, of title deeds, of integration into utility-
sponsored water and electricity systems. Its informality reflects a structural
understanding of formality as involving state regulation (Mica 2016). In large
part the informality is due to the inability of the municipal and national gov-
ernments to cope with high growth and provide formal institutions in new
neighborhoods (Vaa 2007). The data here come from short-term fieldwork in
2009 and long-term knowledge of the Bamako real estate market.

Bamako and its periphery
   Bamako, Mali’s capital city, has grown substantially over the years, from
about 130,000 in the 1960s to 1.9 million in 2010 and estimated at almost 3
million in 2015 (UN Habitat 2014: 270). As the city has grown, so too have its
residential areas. The formal city within the boundaries of the District of Ba-
mako is no longer sufficient to hold its population; urbanized areas include
neighboring, technically rural, communes on the periphery. The District of
Bamako itself contains a patchwork of formally parcelled lots with title deeds
and what locals call «spontaneous neighborhoods», whose populations have


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IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                    65


grown substantially since independence in 1960. In the District, both formal
deeded and informal spontaneous neighborhoods are densely settled; afford-
able housing is difficult to find. Thus many residents have moved outside the
formal District boundaries. As close-in areas become relatively built up, peo-
ple move even farther out into the periphery. There, they find areas managed
under customary tenure.

Customary tenure as the basis of informality on Bamako’s periphery
   Before urbanization, Bamako’s urban periphery was primarily used as agri-
cultural land. Although individuals cultivated their own fields, often in the
family for generations, these were not individually owned. Rather, customary
tenure was conceptualized as village ownership. The village itself had rights
over an area of land, which it considers its land. The village chief, usually a
senior male of the most senior lineage of the village, was the incarnation of
the rights of this collectivity. Traditionally, village chiefs did not act unilater-
ally but with the consultation of elders of other senior lineages. Among the
rights held by the chief was the right to allocate land to newcomers.
   People throughout West Africa, especially in semi-arid zones like Mali,
have used mobility as a strategy to maintain livelihoods for generations.
Crises, such as war or drought, often pushed them to move, but so too did the
search for greater opportunities elsewhere. Village chiefs would allocate set-
tlement rights to newcomers who might invigorate a village economy or pro-
vide better defense in times of war. Thus, villagers generally distinguish an
autochtonous population, descendants of the original settlers, from a
«stranger» population, newcomers or those descended from them. I have no
information on the distribution of population between autochtones and
strangers on Bamako’s periphery, but it is likely that the city’s opportunities
have attracted a significant number of strangers. Although strangers may of-
ten be economically indistinguishable from autochtones, they have inferior
political rights.
   When new residents come to Bamako’s periphery, their goal is to find a
building lot on which they can then construct their own housing. They
search out those who control access to land, usually the village chiefs. This
system is informal in the sense that it is not a part of the formal legal system.
There are no standard building lots, title deeds, or defined roads. Nor do
these areas have access to the range of public services, such as water, sewage,
and electricity, expected in urban communities. Schools and health clinics
exist, but are geared to small rural communities.


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   The central government has introduced some changes into the system. In
the 1990s, Mali decentralized its government by dividing up the country into
communes composed of multiple villages, with local control by elected com-
mune governments. This change was recognized in Mali’s revised 2000 land
code, slightly modified in 2002. This law recognizes the commune’s rights to
any undeeded (i.e., non-matriculated) land within its borders. The law also
recognizes customary land rights; communes can only gain control over the
non-matriculated land held by rural villages with their agreement and the
payment of compensation. The process of urbanization invokes the potential
role of the commune government to matriculate land by apportioning it into
building lots and offering residents title deeds. To do so, however, it must
first matriculate the land after gaining the consent of those with customary
tenure.

Getting land on the periphery
   Many villages’ chiefs have realized that urban growth means that their vil-
lages have little future as agricultural areas. In the past, strangers received
use rights for a symbolic payment of ten kola nuts, but new residents want a
permanent transfer of ownership, where they can build residences. There is
no traditional model for the transfer of land from annual cropping to perma-
nent habitation. Thus, many chiefs, sometimes but not always in conjunction
with elders, have decided that the best option is short-term benefit. They
have begun to negotiate prices with those who would like to settle and build.
Some interviewees noted that prices had increased dramatically, sometimes
10-fold, from the 1980s through 2009. These sales have no formal legal sta-
tus, since village is not and cannot be matriculated; they are informal agree-
ments between customary owners and users.
   Even though the land sale is informal at purchase, the hope of newcomers
is for future formalization. Once a village has informally ceded a significant
percentage of its land to individuals, the commune government may decide
to negotiate a final cession of land from the village to the commune. Then,
the commune can carry out a formal matriculation and parcellization and
sell the lots (now carrying the potential for title) to actual or potential resi-
dents. Residents also envisage that formal parcellization will bring roads,
water, and better services. Thus, informality here can best be conceptualized
not as an alternative to formal urbanization, but as a step on the path to for-
malization. This suggests trans-formality, the bottom-up effort to move to
formality (Mica 2016).


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IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                  67


   During 2009 fieldwork, people did not point to villages in which this trans-
formation had taken place. Instead it was an imaginary that motivated peo-
ple’s actions. When people settled, surveyors, who reflect formal organiza-
tion, were often called upon to mark out plots; sometimes a village under-
took its own parcellization. Villages might also issue a paper marking the
transfer of the lot. People could pay the commune government to stamp this
paper, even though it was not a legal document. This adoption of formal
technologies of ownership suggests the adoption of rational-legal ap-
proaches (Mica 2016).
   Residents establish their ownership by building on their new lots. Resi-
dents hoped that when formal parcellization occurred, they would have the
right to purchase the lots on which they lived. On the other hand, if their
house was in the right of way of a new road or water system, they hoped to
gain the right to buy a replacement lot in the formalized area. Thus, they saw
the existing process as an investment in future stability. They recognized
that they might have to pay three times for their lot: first, to procure land
from the village; second, to get a temporary title when the commune carried
out formal parcellization; and third, to get a title deed, when all conditions,
such as construction of a permanent house according to building standards,
were fulfilled.

Conclusions
   The informal process of urbanizing Bamako’s periphery is thus a bottom-
up effort toward a more formal organization. Driven by urbanites who con-
sider that the periphery offers them a chance for stable and affordable home
ownership, it depends on the cooperation of village chiefs and commune
governments who want the economic benefits that formalization, through
sales and eventual titling, can bring.
   There are losers as well. The main losers are existing villagers, who are
forced to move even further out if they want to continue to farm. Intervie-
wees claimed that farmers saw their land sold out from under them by chiefs
and other village elders. Others said that the chiefs, who should act as repre-
sentatives of villages, used the proceeds from sales to benefit themselves and
their supporters rather than the village as a whole. Another loser is the zone
of Bamako itself, where urban sprawl has led to increasing congestion and
pollution.




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REFERENCES

Demissie, Fassil, 2007, Imperial legacies and postcolonial predicaments: An intro-
      duction, in Postcolonial African cities: Imperial legacies and postcolonial
      predicaments, Fassil Demissie, ed, London, Routledge: 1-10.
Hodder, Rubert, 2016, Global South and North: Why Informality Matters, New
      Global Studies, 10, 2: 113-131.
Kihato, Caroline, 2007, Governing the city? South Africa’s struggle to deal with ur-
      ban immigrants after apartheid, in Postcolonial African cities: Imperial legacies
      and postcolonial predicaments, Fassil Demissie, ed, London, Routledge: 103-
      119.
Mica, Adriana, 2016, Towards a Typology of Hybrid Formalities and Informalities,
      Polish Sociological Review, 194: 139-153.
Ndi, Alfred, 2007, Metropolitanism, capital and patrimony: Theorizing the postcolo-
      nial West African city, in Postcolonial African cities: Imperial legacies and post-
      colonial predicaments, Fassil Demissie, ed, London, Routledge: 11-24.
Roy, Ananya, 2005, Urban Informality: Toward an Epistemology of Planning, Journal
      of the American Planning Association, 71, 2 :147-158.
Smart, Alan, 2006, The Shek Kip Mei myth. Squatters, fires and colonial rule in Hong
      Kong, 1950-1963, Hong Kong, Hong Kong University Press.
UN-Habitat, 2014, The state of African cities: Re-imagining sustainable urban transi-
      tions, Nairobi, UN-Habitat.
Vaa, Mariken, 2000, Housing Policy after Political Transition: The Case of Bamako,
      Environment and Urbanization, 12, 1; 27-34.




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IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                        69




Recrafting in/formality, leveraging public market trade
in Baguio, Philippines
B. Lynne MILGRAM
OCAD University




ABSTRACT: With growing urbanization, Southern governments often privilege large-scale
developments that frustrate urbanites’ livelihood needs. In Baguio, Philippines public
marketers counter such top-down disenfranchisement by operationalizing formal
“advocacy” and informal “everyday” politics. That authorities negotiate agreements to
accept payments for marketers’ infractions, I argue, materializes complex and complicit in-
tersections of formal/informal and legal/illegal practices.




Introduction
   Bustling public markets are a hallmark of many Southeast Asian cities 1.
Yet throughout the Global South, explosive urban growth has prompted
governments to embrace a vision of modernity that favors large-scale
development projects (e.g., supermarkets, shopping malls) rather than
responding to the diversity of urbanites everyday needs. By disenfranchising
these vibrant provisioning sites – venues that planners view as “pre-modern”
remnants of entrepreneurial trade – governments limit residents’ livelihood
and consumption choices. My ongoing research on the redevelopment of the
Baguio City Public Market in the northern Philippines, however,
demonstrates that despite the city’s urbanization agenda, marketers’
advocacy to maintain their long-standing enterprises and the personalized
networks they entail have, to date, secured their livelihoods while
materializing complex intersections of spatial politics and formal/informal
and legal/ illegal practices.

1. This research has been supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) (2012-2017).

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   This paper engages these issues by investigating the mainstream
strategies and the edgy sideroads through which Baguio’s public market
vegetable retailers sustain their businesses given municipal policies that
repeatedly threaten their security. I argue that although the municipal
government agenda privileges privatized and sanitized spaces, marketers
successfully use a range of “advocacy” and “everyday politics” – civil law-
suits, petitions, occupying public space – (Kerkvliet 2009) to contest
constraints imposed from above. Marketers create new interstitial economic
spaces within old ones, for example, by consigning produce to ambulant,
often unauthorized, street vendors and by expanding their stores into public
market aisles. By fashioning such in-between or “gray spaces” of commerce
(Yiftachel 2012) and subsequently obtaining “formal” and “legal” permission
to pay rent to do so, highlights that the city, despite its modernist rhetoric, is
complicit in using informality and extralegality as urban organizing logics
when enabling these concessions is to its advantage. I thus suggest like
Smart and Zerilli (2014: 226, 227, 223) that informality and extralegality
(“not-yet-legal”) emerge as «a style or set of practices» rather than as
distinct sectors of the economy and that their on-the-ground application
demonstrates how urban organization is diversely shaped by local
interpretations of what is formal, informal, legal and illegal2.
   Ultimately, Baguio City Public Market retailers explain that to sustain
their enterprises they have had to activate available resources across sectors.
In 1995, the Baguio government awarded the market redevelopment contract
to a Manila company, UNIWIDE (Marvil 2017). To challenge this contract’s
anticipated threat to their business autonomy, marketers have launched a
series of formal civil lawsuits and appeals while simultaneously
operationalizing everyday politics, both of which continue to thwart the
city’s redevelopment plan.
   To situate Baguio’s public market trade, I explore how cities might address
the competing demands of capital accumulation and urbanities’ subsistence
needs. Focusing on the retail sales of fresh vegetables, I then explore the
channels though which marketers reinforce their central role in local food
provisioning systems.

Repositioning cityness and informality
   Rather than governments imposing an image of “cityness” that privileges
well-off urbanites, Jennifer Robinson (2006: 10) argues for policies to adopt
an “ordinary city” perspective – a “reterritorialisation”– that considers «the
city “as a whole” […] in all its diversity and complexity». Public market trade,
2. See Smart and Zerilli (2014) for a detailed analysis of “extralegality”.


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IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                  71


rather than indicating activities of underdevelopment, evidence how sellers
use «proximity in economic interactions to cement relations of trust»
between individuals and organizations and thus create a more responsive
and reflexive city (Robinson 2006: 110). As Douglass and Daniere (2009: 1-2)
remind us, in situations of limited infrastructure development such as that in
Baguio (e.g., poor housing and social service provision), the street, public
markets, and other public or “life-spaces” become crucial settings for
inventing ways of being sociable, earning a living, and gaining recognition.
Finding ways of being modern in cities worldwide then is realized, not only
in the formal built environment, but also in flexible private and public spaces
and enacted in personal performative socioeconomic practices.
   That Baguio vegetable marketers have occupied public space to expand
their businesses and subsequently, as noted, secured municipal permission
to do so, illustrates how governments, in effect, have “formalized informal-
ity” (Smart, Smart 2017: 3) when it is to their advantage (e.g., increased
rental income). Both Baguio marketers and the city have exploited the fuzzy-
ness of any formal/informal and legal/illegal spheres to highlight, as Ananya
Roy (2009) argues, that from the outset informality is inherent in city plan-
ning as planners determine which activities are authorized and which are
not. Supported by relations of trust, Baguio marketers’ «self-made urban spa-
ces, reclaimed and appropriated sites […] created by predominantly
marginalized communities» through legal and not-so-legal means – thus
provide «new expressions of the collective realms» that can realize diverse
and inclusive contemporary cities that respond to urbanites’ varied needs
(Hou 2010: 2).

Baguio and its public market
   Baguio, an urban center of 300,000, is the government, education, and
administration hub for northern Luzon’s five mountain provinces and as
such provides the customer base new businesses seek. As the altitude of
Baguio and its surrounding area are above 1,500 meters, the cool
temperatures enable farmers to grow highland temperate-climate vegetables
(e.g., broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, cabbage) that are unique to this region
and thus provision a large part of the country. At the retail level, my focus
here, Baguio consumers obtain upland vegetables as well as lowland produce
(e.g., string beans, squash, eggplant, fresh greens) trucked in daily from
neighboring provinces, at the public market, from street vendors, and in
supermarkets and neighborhood shops. The Baguio City Public Market,
however, continues as the mainstay for fresh produce provisioning as the
following case studies demonstrate.

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72                                         ALAN SMART, JOSEPHINE SMART, FILIPPO M. ZERILLI (EDS)


Vegetable commodity chains and informality in practice
   Patricia Bandoy’s highland vegetable business, for example, is similar to
that of other vegetable marketers3. Patricia sells what she calls, «vegetable
sets», namely, vegetables commonly used together in customary dishes. This
sales tactic enables consumers to purchase, in one place, the ingredients
they need for specific recipes. After purchasing her vegetables each morning
from her sukis (favorite) wholesalers in the market’s Hanger Wholesale
Vegetable Section, Patricia gives her receipts to her porter who then collects
and delivers her goods to her store. Trust anchors the relationships among
porters, retailers, and wholesalers. Patricia pays for her vegetables in cash
but by making periodic installments during the day. When business is slow,
Patricia carries over her interest-free credit to wholesalers to the following
day. When Patricia has to reorder vegetables but is unable to shop personally
she explains, «I trust my suki will pick good quality produce for me and my
porter will promptly deliver it; we understand each other’s situations».
   As public market stalls are small (1.5 x 1.5 meters), marketers looking to
expand their businesses employ innovative tactics that further activate the
elasticity of any formal/informal and legal/illegal spheres. Patricia, for
example, extends her store premises into the public market aisle by placing
baskets of produce in front of her stall while her neighbor has constructed
overhead shelving expanding into the airspace above her store. Although
these actions contravene the Market Code guidelines (City of Baguio 2000-
2001), Patricia and her neighbors have negotiated with the market super-
intendent to pay extra rent to formalize their informal and extralegal
initiatives (see also Milgram 2013: 85-88).
   Further down the row from Patricia’s store, Susan Talango sells lowland
vegetables such as eggplant, fresh greens, and banana hearts. To order her
produce, Susan sends a text to her viahera – wholesaler – the night before the
5 a.m. morning delivery. When the produce arrives, Susan checks her order or
has her porter collect and deliver her purchases. Susan explains that, «My
porter knows the viaheras with whom I conduct business. He does not need
receipts; he simply visits each viahera to ask, “What has Susan purchased
today?” Our negotiations are based on mutual respect».
   Like Patricia, Susan realizes that a successful business entails developing
good social relationships. Thus, when Susan sources a new vegetable from a
farmer, she often distributes samples to her customers explaining, «I want
shoppers to enjoy themselves at my store and hopefully make additional
3. All names of people are pseudonyms.


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IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                  73


purchases». While Susan’s gesture offers good formal service, it informally
creates a personalized tie recalling Pine and Gilmore’s (1998) concept of the
“experience economy”. As these authors (1998: 98) note, «commodities are
fungible […] services intangible, but experiences memorable» (emphasis in
the original). By wrapping her commodity transaction in a singular
experience, Susan fosters participatory interactions that distinguish face-to-
face public market shopping from often-disengaged supermarket encounters.
   To diversify their enterprises, in effect working as both retailer and
wholesaler, Baguio’s upland and lowland vegetable marketers often consign
produce (two to five kilos) to unauthorized itinerant vendors selling in the
market aisles and in the surrounding streets. By leveraging such gray
business spaces, retailers realize “informality” as situations in which «the
goods and services transacted are legal, but the ways in which they are trans-
acted are not» (Smart, Smart 2017: 2). Cognizant that such varied vending
practices create the market vibrancy, albeit the messiness, that attracts many
residents and tourists, authorities compromise their modernist agenda by
collecting rent from such informal and extralegal sellers – at least until the
UNIWIDE case is settled. In a provocative initiative, moreover, Baguio’s
largest supermarket currently mounts weekend kiosk displays of local
specialty products in the store foyer and aisles in its effort to reproduce the
liveliness of the public market down the street.

Conclusion
   «The Indian city» argues Ananda Roy (2009: 81), «is made possible
through the idiom of planning whose key is informality». As Baguio’s public
market trade similarly demonstrates both officials and retailers
operationalize the elasticity of informality as an urban organizing logic to
achieve their respective ends – rental income for the city and viable
livelihoods for marketers. Any «splintering of urbanism» then, «does not take
place at the fissure between formality and informality» but «in fractal
fashion within the informalised production of space» (Roy 2009: 82;
emphasis in the original).
   Baguio’s vegetable marketers, however, cannot assume their trade gains
are secure but must continue to advocate for livelihood sustainability. As
John Cross (1998: 35) argues for Mexican street vendors, government
toleration of illegal practices, a sphere he terms «semi-formality», is a
concession rather than a right. By not altering the laws, authorities can
withdraw such semiformal concessions when these strategies no longer
satisfy government interests (see also Smart, Smart 2017: 439).

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   The nuanced practices of Baguio marketers thus provide ways to
understand cities as “multiplex spaces” – sites where “overlapping networks”
of association, interaction, and fragmentation can come together to
accommodate urban diversity (Robinson 2006: 172). Facilitating the already-
inherent enmeshing of formal/informal and extralegal sectors thus mitigates
the “economic reductionism” (Robinson 2006: 109) currently steamrolling
urban life to remake contemporary ordinary cities by and more responsive to
residents’ and governments’ needs.




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IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                        75




REFERENCES

City Government of Baguio, 2000-2001, City Tax Ordinance (Sections 143, 153),
      Baguio, Philippines: Office of the City Treasurer.
Cross, John C., 1998, Informal Politics: Street Vendors and the State in Mexico City,
      Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press.
Douglass, Mike, Amrita Daniere, 2009, Urbanization and civic space in Asia, in The
      Politics of Civic Space in Asia: Building urban communities, Amrita Daniere and
      Mike Douglass, eds, London and New York, Routledge: 1-18.
Hou, Jeffrey, 2010, (Not) your everyday public space, in Insurgent Public Space:
      Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities, Jeffrey Hou, ed,
      London and New York, Routledge: 1-17.
Kerkvliet, Benjamin J., 2009, Everyday politics in peasant societies (and ours),
      Journal of Peasant Studies, 36, 1: 227-243.
Marvil, Marlon, 2017, Sufficient ground for UNIWIDE contract cancellation, Baguio
      Sun Star, February 8: 3.
Milgram, B. Lynne, 2013, Taking the Street into the Market: The Politics of Space
      and Work in Baguio, Philippines, in Street Economies in the Urban Global South,
      Karen Tranberg Hansen, Walter E. Little, B. Lynne Milgram, eds, Sante Fe, NM,
      School of Advanced Research Press: 71-92.
Pine, Joseph, James Gilmore, 1998, Welcome to the Experience Economy, Harvard
      Business Review, July-August: 97-105.
Robinson, Jennifer, 2006, Ordinary Cities: Between modernity and development,
      London and New York, Routledge.
Roy, Ananya, 2009, Why India Cannot Plan Its Cities: Informality, Insurgence and
      the Idiom of Urbanization, Planning Theory 8, 1: 76-87.
Smart, Alan, Josephine Smart, 2017, Formalization as confinement in colonial Hong
      Hong, International Sociology, 32, 4: 437-453.
Smart, Alan, Filippo M. Zerilli, 2014, Extralegality, in A Companion to Urban
      Anthropology, Donald M. Nonini, ed, Malden, Wiley-Blackwell: 222-238.
Yifachel, Oren, 2012, Critical theory and “gray space”: Mobilization of the colonized,
      in Cities for People not for Profit: Critical urban theory and the right to the city,
      Neil Brenner, Peter Marcuse, Margit Mayer, eds, London and New York,
      Routledge: 24-41.




                                            2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2017: 69-75
IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                          77




Recursive in/formality
Time and ideology in a distributed monetary system

Sarah MUIR
CUNY, City University of New York




ABSTRACT: I argue that in/formality is not a distinction between two qualities, but rather, a
distinction of relative position achieved through linguistic and nonlinguistic practices of
categorization. Through an analysis of illegal currency trading in Argentina, I show how
temporal and ideological dynamics shape the semiotic framing of in/formality in any given
context.




   As Keith Hart (1973) originally proposed and as the premise of this collec-
tion insists, formality and informality are necessarily intertwined. In what
follows, I approach that intertwining as a semiotic process between two co-
constitutive cultural categories. In taking up that approach, I draw on the
concept of “fractal recursivity” that Gal (2000) and Gal and Irvine (1995)
have developed to describe categorial distinctions – such as public/private,
inner/outer, friend/foe – that do not refer to any particular thing or set of
things, but that can be projected «onto narrower contexts or broader ones»
as well as onto different «activities, identities, institutions, spaces, and inter-
actions», all of which can, in turn, be recategorized over and over again (Gal
2000: 81). I propose that in/formality is just this sort of distinction: a distinc-
tion not between two qualities that inhere within and define different acts or
domains, but rather a performed distinction of relative position that must be
continually achieved through semiotic practices of framing and categoriza-
tion. I argue that analytic attention to these linguistic and nonlinguistic
practices helps bring into view the often overlooked but crucial roles that
temporal and ideological dynamics play in shaping the articulation of in/for-
mality in any given case.


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    To make this argument, I will describe a context where the fractal recur-
sivity of in/formality played out in an especially visible fashion. The context
was Argentina between 2011 and 2015, when currency regulations criminal-
ized the popular practice of saving in U.S. dollars. The regulations were an
attempt to safeguard the nation’s dollar reserves, which had come under in-
creasing pressure due to the coincidence of multiple factors, including Ar-
gentina’s limited access to foreign capital (due to its 2002 sovereign default),
a global slump in commodity prices, high inflation 1, and the always pressing
need to service that portion of the foreign debt that had not been defaulted
upon. These circumstances had prompted businesses and individuals alike to
hoard dollars, which had long served as a vehicle for hedging against mone-
tary loss in a national economy famous for economic crises and currency de-
valuations2. As the nation’s reserves diminished rapidly, President Cristina
Fernández de Kirchner faced the prospect of yet another crisis. Despite the
dire situation, the currency restrictions proved highly controversial. Support-
ers of the President defended them as necessary for monetary sovereignty
and economic stability. Her opponents, meanwhile, saw them as a state in-
trusion into the market. With the restrictions, the government did prevent fi-
nancial collapse. However, it did not do so by eradicating the purchase of dol-
lars. Rather, criminalization produced a complex monetary system that fore-
stalled outright crisis, but only at the cost of its own popular legitimacy. That
unstable system was defined by a series of nested in/formal distinctions.
    Take the distinction between the “white dollar” (dólar blanco) and “black
dollar” (dólar negro). The former term referred to the peso/dollar exchange
rate declared by the Ministry of Finance. Because of the currency restric-
tions, that rate was not actionable in practice3. Nonetheless, it declared pur-
ported macroeconomic truths and served as the official basis for wage nego-
tiations and budgetary decisions. By contrast, “black dollar” referred to the
illegal rate at which people purchased dollars with pesos accrued through
widely condemned activities, especially the trafficking of drugs, arms, and
humans. Whereas the white dollar was standardized and publicly known, the
1. A scandal at the national statistics agency (INDEC) during this period makes it impossible
to state confidently the accurate inflation rate.
2. Hoarding techniques varied from stuffing dollars under mattresses to Swiss bank ac-
counts. Physically storing dollar bills is popular because of the government’s history of seiz-
ing dollar-denominated banking accounts (Muir 2015). As for Swiss bank accounts, Ar-
gentina has one of the world’s highest numbers per capita (Swiss Leaks 2016). See also
D’Avella’s (2014) account of the related practice of storing monetary value in real estate pur-
chases.
3. In principle, there could be exceptions that would allow the purchase of dollars in certain
circumstances. However, the criteria for granting those exceptions were never publicized and
they appear to have been made in extremely limited fashion.


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IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                        79


black dollar was negotiated anew in each transaction, inevitably carried out
in hidden, even dangerous, conditions. As popular terms, then, “white dollar”
and “black dollar” reified, nominalized, and commensurated wildly different
practices of calculation, exchange, and negotiation. The terms framed those
practices as diametrically opposed dollars: one formal, legal, and morally le-
gitimate; the other informal, illegal, and morally illegitimate.
   This opposition was complicated by the “blue dollar” (dólar blue)4. The
blue dollar was just as illegal as the black dollar, but people who opposed the
currency restrictions and the President more generally considered it legiti-
mate. The pesos used to buy blue dollars may have been earned legally or il-
legally, but always in a putatively moral (or, at least, amoral) fashion. This
dollar was bought in “caves” (cuevas), spaces tucked away inside legal busi-
nesses, from corner stores to banks. The trade was widespread and tolerated
by government officials except for periodic, highly publicized crackdowns.
Although individual transactions were hidden from public view, the blue rate
was highly visible, for it was determined by an algorithm that regularly cal-
culated the difference between the stock valuations of several companies
traded on the New York City and Buenos Aires exchanges. The result of that
calculation was published continually on a widely consulted website5. Oppo-
sition news organizations proclaimed it on the front page of the daily papers
and news organizations loyal to the President condemned it. And so, the blue
dollar became the topic of constant commentary in face-to-face, mass media,
and social media channels.
   Almost without exception, that commentary was structured as a polarized
debate. Those who defended its legitimacy as a necessity, given the currency
restrictions’ purportedly populist and statist assault on market logics, re-
ferred to it as as “parallel” (paralelo), “free” (libre), or “informal” (informal).
All these terms, along with the practices of publicity and algorithmic calcula-
tion, did a significant amount of stipulative labor, for they projected infor-
mality onto the blue dollar while distinguishing it morally and practically
from both black and white dollars. Supporters of the government’s currency
restrictions, on the other hand, refused those terms, preferring “illegal cur-
rency exchanges” (cambio ilegal), a nominalization that posited a black and
white terrain in which legality, morality, and formality were coterminous and
attempts to skirt monetary regulation amounted to attempts to destabilize a
democratically elected government dedicated to the needs of “the people” (el
pueblo).
4. My account of the blue dollar is drawn from several news media and academic sources, but
especially from Herzbach 2014 and Sánchez 2013.
5. To my knowledge, it is not publicly known who sponsored the website (www.dolar-
blue.blogspot.com).

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80                                         ALAN SMART, JOSEPHINE SMART, FILIPPO M. ZERILLI (EDS)


   There was also a host of other “dollars” (dólares). There was a “gold dollar”
or “tourist dollar” (dólar gold or dólar turista), the rate when one purchased
something abroad in dollars with a peso-denominated Argentine credit card.
There was a “Colonia dollar” (dólar Colonia) the rate for extracting dollar bills
with an Argentine banking card at an ATM in nearby Colonia, Uruguay. The
terms “gold”, “tourist”, and “Colonia” referred to practices that enabled peo-
ple to work around the currency restrictions by paying the white rate plus a
percentage-based fee imposed by the Argentine government. There was also
a “green dollar” (dólar verde), the rate for purchasing dollars illegally from
perambulating vendors who charged a premium on the blue as compensation
for the risks of the street. The green dollar (like the black) was not standard-
ized; rather it was derived on an ad hoc basis from the blue and shaped by
judgments regarding variables such as time of day, location, recent political
developments, and the perceived trustworthiness of the parties involved.
   Thus, the gold, Colonia, and green dollars all stood as informal, but in dif-
ferent ways. Despite the regulatory processes that produced the gold and
Colonia exchange rates, the government never recognized them as such. That
studied refusal of recognition, along with the popular naming of those prac-
tices as “dollars”, framed them, like the blue, as the informal but technically
legal derivations of the formal white dollar. Meanwhile, other practices of
naming and calculating framed the green as the informal derivation of the
relatively formal blue. That the blue dollar could stand as formal with respect
to the green and informal with respect to the white demonstrates nicely the
concept of fractal recursivity that I mentioned at the outset: Across these
dollars, in/formality was not a matter of two distinct, if intertwined, social
spaces or even types of activity. Rather, it was the effect of a continually re-
imposed perspectival frame.
   This bewildering array of dollars was not an officially acknowledged sys-
tem of multiple exchange rates, but that’s what it amounted to. We are all –
as consumers and economists, citizens and politicians, academics and poli-
cymakers – accustomed to thinking of money as a unitary vehicle that serves
as store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account. Here, those and
other functions were priced differentially across a distributed system in
which each “dollar”’s price cited that of the others. The result was the possi-
bility of arbitrage, and all sorts of people – from small business owners to
teachers, from waitresses to lawyers – made small-scale profits (or avoided
small-scale losses) by exploiting the differences amongst the various dollars.
It was this illegal but tolerated arbitrage that allowed the Argentine mone-



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IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                        81


tary system to perform the delicate balancing act required by the conditions
of the period in question. Nonetheless, because of the widespread ideology
that envisions money as a frictionless, unified medium, the practice of arbi-
trage and the distributed monetary system that made it possible were not of-
ficially recognized. And so, another projection of in/formality took place on a
far larger scale.
   Despite the thoroughly polarized debate over the legitimacy of the Presi-
dent and her monetary policy, everyone agreed that the existence of multiple
exchange rates was abnormal. For her supporters, monetary value should de-
termined by the state, and for her detractors, by the market. However, for all
concerned, monetary value should be unitary 6. And so, both sides framed the
distributed monetary system as informal. The President’s administration did
so in several ways, most obviously by tolerating and even enabling the dis-
tributed monetary system but disavowing it through periodic crackdowns
and continual public condemnation. Those opposed to the President framed
it as informal by insisting that it was an unfortunate but necessary way of
working around her alleged mismanagement. Through these practices of
publicity, policing, and policy-making, people on both sides of the debate (as
well as participants and non-participants in the exchange of non-white dol-
lars) all treated this distributed monetary system as the informal counterpart
to an idealized, nonexistent monetary system in which state and market val-
uations of money were perfectly aligned. In other words, formality figured
here as a spectral and utopian aspiration, from which Argentina fell short.
   Here, then, in/formality played out across different scales and social spa-
ces in distinguishing between actors, objects, exchanges, calculations, and
even entire monetary systems. In closing, I would like to propose three im-
plications of this proliferating series of recursive distinctions.
   First, in/formality is not necessarily about in/visibility, as we might tend to
assume7. Neither is it about distinguishing between any particular constella-
tion of qualities. Rather, contextually situated actors must work to impose
the distinction convincingly through linguistic and nonlinguistic practices.
In other words, in/formality is best seen as the effect of an ideological strug-
gle over what will be dis/avowed and on what grounds the legitimacy of
dis/avowal will be judged.
6. This antinomy between the two grounds of monetary value is not unique to Argentina. In
fact, it is utterly common because, as Hart (1986) argued, monetary value always requires
the authorizing work of both political and economic institutions, which need not articulate
smoothly with one another.
7. The website of the Global Informality Project (2017), for example, describes informal
practices both as “invisible”.

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   Second, the temporality of that struggle is key. In the case presented here,
the impositions of in/formality were especially unstable. Because of the
monetary ideology mentioned above, the distributed monetary system was
framed not simply informal, but as intolerably so. People thus judged it to be
so dysfunctional that collapse was inevitable. That judgment in turn
prompted many people to seek out dollars with heightened zeal, thereby fur-
ther destabilizing the monetary system8. The result was a dialectical rela-
tionship between judgments of legitimacy and mechanisms of price that pro-
duced an ever greater disparity between the white and blue prices. That dis-
parity, in turn, contributed significantly to the 2015 electoral victory of
Mauricio Macri, who succeeded President Fernández de Kirchner and imme-
diately made good on his campaign promise to end her currency regulations.
   Finally, although the particularities of this case stem from the especially
fraught context of Argentine financial history, it is far from exceptional. In-
deed, the general dynamic may prove quite commonplace, and not only in
the Global South, for the contemporary moment is one in which the perfor-
mative power of monetary policy (Holmes 2013) has come under consider-
able strain, even in the political-economic centers of global finance (Appadu-
rai 2015; Streeck 2016). It remains to be seen how that strain might increas-
ingly compel central bankers to turn to in/formality as a tool of monetary
governance – with potentially momentous repercussions for ideologies not
only of monetary value but also of the relationship between states and mar-
kets.




8. See Muir (2016) for an analysis of this self-destructive dynamic in practices and discourses
of “corruption” in post-crisis Argentina.


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IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                      83




REFERENCES

Appadurai, Arjun, 2015, Banking on words: The failure of language in the age of deriv-
      ative finance, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
D’Avella, Nicholas, 2014, Ecologies of investment: Crisis histories and brick futures
      in Argentina, Cultural anthropology, 29, 1: 173-199.
Gal, Susan, 2000, A semiotics of the public/private distinction, Differences: A journal
      of feminist cultural studies, 13, 1: 77-95.
Gal, Susan, Judith Irvine, 1995, The boundaries of languages and disciplines: how
      ideologies construct difference, Social research, 62, 4: 967-1001.
Global Informality Project, 2017, http://in-formality.com.
Hart, Keith, 1973, Informal income opportunities and urban employment in Ghana,
      Journal of modern African studies, 11, 1: 61-89.
Hart, Keith, 1986, Heads or tails? two sides of the same coin, Man, 21, 4: 637-656.
Herzbach, Jeff, 2014, Inside Argentina’s blue dollar market, The Argentina indepen-
      dent, 19 November, www.argentinaindependent.com/currentaffairs/analysis/in-
      side-argentinas-blue-dollar-market/ (accessed on 15/10/2017)
Holmes, Douglas, 2013, Economy of words: Communicative imperatives in central
      banks, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
Muir, Sarah, 2015, The currency of failure: Money and middle-class critique in post-
      crisis Buenos Aires, Cultural anthropology, 30, 2: 310-335.
Muir, Sarah, 2016, On historical exhaustion: Argentine critique in an era of “total
      corruption”, Comparative studies in society and history, 58, 1: 128-159.
Sánchez, María Soledad, 2013, Interacciones económicas, interacciones simbólicas:
      Una aproximación etnográfica al significado social del dólar blue en Ar-
      gentina, Antípoda, 17: 133-152.
Streeck, Wolfgang, 2016, How will capitalism end? New York, Verso.
Swiss Leaks, 2016, https://projects.icij.org/swiss-leaks/.




                                          2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2017: 77-83
IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                          85




To work or not to work
In/formalization practices in the Italian public sector

Antonio Maria PUSCEDDU
Universitat de Barcelona




ABSTRACT: This piece examines the position of workfare scheme recipients in the municipal
administration of a southern Italian city. Looking at the interplay between different regula-
tory frameworks – from administrative to labour and welfare reforms – in a particular locale,
I emphasize the analytical relevance of the formal-informal linkage in understanding the
production of spheres of informality and negotiation within a bureaucracy.



   1. There seems to be some irony in the fact that the concept of “informal
economy” entered the jargon of academics, scholars and policy makers at the
beginning of the 1970s oil crisis and became popular in the long period of
economic and political transformation that followed. Although crafted to
make sense of the difference in Third World countries economy – being, un-
der this respect, a truly «Cold War concept» (Hart 2010: 151), it did not take
too long to realize how informality was becoming a «universal feature of the
world economy» (Hart 2006: 22; cf. Ghezzi, Mingione 2004; Portes, Castells,
Benton 1989).
   Rather than focusing on informality as the simple lack of formality, it ap-
peared analytically more useful to focus on the inter-linkages between for-
mality and informality and to analyse a broad range of phenomena through
the lens of formal-informal relations. At a general and abstract level, the
concept of informality permits to think the «unspecified content» which is
built into the «bureaucratic form» (Hart 2010: 148). At the same time, one
should not forget that a certain degree of formalization is always inherent to
informality. What matters, in any case, is to underscore how formality and
informality are mutually constituted and generated.
   In this contribution to the Forum I want to focus on the formal-informal
linkages in the bureaucratic apparatus of the state. More in particular, I want
to address the emergence of particular trends of informalization of labour

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within the Italian public administration, showing how the interactions be-
tween different scales of (de)regulation and the concrete situations of local
administrations may favour the reproduction of informal labour arrange-
ments. The ethnographic material I will be briefly referring to draws from a
wider ethnography of livelihood practices and grassroots understandings of
the economy1 in a southern Italian city along the Adriatic coastline. Here I
will focus on the position of workfare scheme recipients in the local munici-
pal administration. I believe that addressing in-formalization practices in the
public administration may help raise a number of useful questions concern-
ing the definition and analytical value of the formal-informal relation in the
current historical conjuncture.
   2. In the summer of 2016 a union assembly was summoned in the town
hall to discuss a labour stabilization plan. The target of the plan were almost
eighty recipients of the LSU workfare scheme2 – Lavori Socialmente Utili (lit-
erally: socially useful jobs), who had been waiting for years to be perma-
nently hired by the administration. They were first employed in 1998 in a bi-
ennial project for promoting waste recycling and later distributed in the vari-
ous branches of the municipal administration, where they have been fulfill-
ing a variety of tasks – from administrative work to caretakers, from cleaning
services to maintenance work. However, while doing the same job as “formal”
employees, LSU “workers” were excluded from any labour regulatory frame-
work. Instead of receiving a wage and the relative benefits, they were entitled
to a temporary subsidy from the National Institute of Social Security (INPS),
periodically renewed. The “formal” difference of their position did have sub-
stantial implications that concerned labour relations, lack of bargaining
power and full subordination. They were not entitled to any reward – such as
productivity bonuses or performance related pay, which could only be allo-
cated after an informal agreement among employees who were willing to re-
nounce to a share of their own.
   During the assembly the union representatives illustrated the proposal of
the labour stabilization plan elaborated by the human resources executive.
The triennial plan estimated that part of the workers could be hired as A –
the lowest rank – and the remaining as B, according to the financial re-


1. The research was funded by the European Research Council Advanced Grant “Grassroots
Economics: Meaning, project and practice in the pursuit of livelihood” [GRECO], IDEAS-ERC
FP7, Project Number: 323743.
2. Although the LSU scheme differs in various ways from conventional workfare schemes, it
can be considered a stepping stone in the Italian transition from the classical welfare state
to a workfare model.


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sources and the organizational chart. The plan was welcome with cautious
enthusiasm, since previous expectations and promises of labour stabilization
had been repeatedly frustrated. Discomfort and disappointment, instead, had
come to prevail over time, undermining collective solidarity. During the de-
bate some female “workers” erupted, raising the issue of who were going to
get the A or B rank. The implicit suspicion was that someone could receive a
preferential help thanks to his or her connections in the administrative hier-
archy3. Others reacted by raising the issue of “deservingness”, by remarking
that «if you haven’t done anything, what can you expect?» Another com-
plained that she had always kept herself away from internal conspiracies and
for that reason was not even entitled to a writing desk. After the assembly
ended, a worker commented to me that those who didn’t manage to get a
desk were the ones who «did not want to work». On the contrary, she had
been doing everything she was requested: «It is by doing so that I earned the
desk, because I have shown that I deserve it».
   The deservingness of one’s achieved position – symbolized by the desk –
was often claimed by those workers who committed themselves to learning
and fulfilling all the task they were being assigned. In some cases, their com-
petence and knowledge of administrative work allowed them to hold posi-
tions of responsibility, by actually filling the personnel shortage. This type of
aspiration was mainly cultivated by women, most of whom held a secondary
school diploma, who nonetheless had been doing mainly unpaid housework
before applying to the LSU scheme. Men breadwinners, on the contrary, fo-
cused on saving time to keep an “informal” job to integrate the meagre (near
to) 600 Euros monthly subsidy.
   The social and economic background of the city is also important to un-
derstand how the ambiguous status of LSU “workers” is being experienced in
relation to ideas of employment and unemployment, and to the social impli-
cations of being a wage-worker or a subsidy recipient. Similarly to other
southern cities targeted by large-scale programs of capital-intensive indus-
trialization in the 1960s, it has been undergoing a process of industrial
downsizing and, eventually, gradual deindustrialization, with consequential
reduction of employment opportunities. High rates of unemployment, far
above the national average, the expansion of tertiary low-income sectors and
unwaged precarious works define the livelihood frameworks for a consistent
segment of the population (cf. Mingione 1988).

3. Collective expectations were eventually frustrated again few months later, when the newly
elected municipal government announced a revision of the labour stabilization plan, which
reduced to 22 the number of LSU “workers” to be permanently hired.

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   3. The informalization of labour in the local municipal administration re-
sulted from the combination of various national regulatory frameworks that
in the 1990s intended to reorganize significant sectors of the economy and
state bureaucracy. First, the shift from welfare to workfare allowed local ad-
ministrations to temporarily resort to the unemployed and redundant work-
ers for the fulfilment of jobs of “public utility”. Second, the reform of the
public administration, according to the principles of the New Public Manage-
ment, began to unfold in the years the LSU scheme was implemented. Em-
ployees and LSU recipients were confronted with the increasing tension be-
tween highly formalized and businesslike representations of public services
and the informalization that regulate their actual functioning. Third, in-
creasingly binding budgetary constraints on local administrations and the
consequent reduction of resources available created the condition for resort-
ing to LSU recipients – that is, subsidy receivers – for filling the personnel
shortage.
   LSU recipients increased nationwide in the late 1990s, when they reached
the peak figure of almost 170.000 (source: INPS). At the same time a new leg-
islation provided the legal framework to “empty out” the large pool of LSU
workers by facilitating their placement in the private (e.g. granting tax
breaks) and public sectors. Nonetheless, the expectations raised by the
prospects of achieving a permanent public employment may help us under-
stand the informal logics that workers themselves appeared able to negoti-
ate. These expectations are clearly influenced by the larger social and eco-
nomic environment, where people have to cope with the scarcity of stable
and regular employment opportunities, with the recourse to vertical rela-
tions to achieve individual benefits, and where public employment is still
perceived as a relatively safe and stable social and economic position. Many
life stories of LSU recipients, if they could be recalled here, would confirm
how informality and formality are inextricably linked in people’s livelihood
strategies, in their ways of making a living and dealing with the state.
   In conclusion, the brief analysis I have undertaken suggests the analytical
relevance of the formal-informal linkage in approaching how the interplay
between different regulatory frameworks – from administrative to labour and
welfare reforms – unfolds in a particular locale. The concrete implementa-
tion of workfare schemes, more specifically, provides an interesting case for
pointing out how formalization and informalization processes are deeply in-
terlinked in the material and ideological constitution of citizenship in con-
temporary Italian society. The analysis of how workfare recipients negotiate


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their condition and prospect of in/formalization is underpinned by notions
of deservingness and dignity, but also constrained by forms of humiliation
and subordination. It is from this standpoint that, perhaps, the formal-infor-
mal linkage unfolds its analytical potentials by allowing to read also the pop-
ular dialectics of negotiation of state bureaucratic apparatus.


REFERENCES
Ghezzi, Simone, Enzo Mingione, 2003, Beyond the informal economy. New trends in
      post-Fordist transition, in, Globalization, the State, and Violence, Jonathan Fried-
      man, ed, Rowman, Altamira Press: 87-106.
Hart, Keith, 2006, Bureaucratic form and the informal economy, in Linking the for-
      mal and informal economy. Concepts and policies, Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis,
      Ravi Kanbur, Elinor Ostrom, eds, Oxford, Oxford University Press: 21-35.
Hart, Keith, 2010, Informal economy, in The human economy. A citizen’s guide, Keith
      Hart, Jean-Louis Laville, Antonio David Cattani, eds, Cambridge, Polity Press:
      142-153.
Mingione, Enzo, 1988, Work and Informal Activities in Urban Southern Italy, in On
      Work. Historical, Comparative and Theoretical Approaches, Raymond E. Pahl, ed,
      Oxford, Blackwell: 548-578.
Portes, Alejandro, Manuel Castells, Lauren A. Benton, eds, 1989, The Informal Econ-
      omy. Studies in Advanced and Less Developed Countries, Baltimore & London,
      The John Hopkins University Press.




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IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                           91




Informality within government agencies tasked with
controlling informal economic practices

Alan SMART
University of Calgary




ABSTRACT: The trend to dualism in the study of in/formality means that we usually neglect
informality within government, usually seen as the locus of formality, but in practice usually
relying on informal practices to get things done. This commentary uses archival documents
on colonial Hong Kong to challenge this duality.




   At its most basic, informality is not following the formal procedures de-
manded in a specific domain of practice (Smart, Zerilli 2014). Yet, distin-
guishing between formal and informal ways of doing things has important
consequences, as Max Weber clearly recognized in his work on bureaucracy. I
stress only one of these, how a dualistic account in which government is the
institution which forges and enforces formal regulations to govern economy
and society obscures informality within government itself. Corruption is an
exception, but is characteristically explained away by references to individual
“bad apples”, the inappropriate intrusion of private interests into public con-
cerns, or persistence of “traditional” habits that need to be “modernized”
through rational bureaucracy. Even in its exceptions, recognition of govern-
mental informality reinforces identification of formality with government
and law. The solution to corruption, then, is to thoroughly impose the rule of
law on government itself.
   This kind of symbolic system, where formal and governmental are equated
and seen as the polar opposite of informal and societal (formal:informal /
government:society), not only serves as a “distinction” that elevates govern-
ment above society, but also obscures the inescapable interpenetration of
the informal into the formal and the formal into the informal. The situation
resembles Bruno Latour’s account of “the moderns” who conceived culture
and nature as absolute opposites, making possible rapid development of sci-

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ence, which in turn continually produces hybrids which confuse the bound-
aries between culture and nature. Just as Latour argues that we have “never
been modern”, I would suggest that we have never been formal. The more ef-
fort that is made into “purification” through formalizing procedures, the
more inevitable it seems to be that informality creeps back in, as a fix for
rigidity and conflicts between diverse formal regulations. Modernity itself
can be seen as the rise of formality, progressively displacing the personalism
and venial alliances of monarchial courts by rational rules and procedures
that theoretically apply to all citizens. The growth of formality, however, is
not complete and arguably could never be complete, as research into colonial
Hong Kong reveals.
   Before the 1970s, bribe-taking was widespread in Hong Kong’s govern-
ment, particularly among street-level officials. They had to deal with a Chi-
nese population distant from a government they had no formal influence
over, including refugees who brought expectations from Republican China
that dealing with government was best avoided and if necessary required
bribes. Many had to break laws to survive, so opportunities for squeezing
squatters, hawkers and unlicensed factory operators abounded. Observers
thought the problem emerged because colonial rules «concerning corruption
were incongruent with Chinese “folk norms”; what the law regarded as cor-
rupt, ordinary Chinese people often saw as a normal part of life» (Hampton
2012: 228). The danger of orientalism in corruption discussions pointed out
by Gupta (2012: 81) is visible here, but dubious stereotypes clearly have em-
pirical consequences, legitimating Europeans taking bribes.
   Regulation creates opportunities for profits by those with discretion over
control of the activity. Domains where government tolerated illegal practices
were particularly prone to corruption. Unlicensed street vendors «were per-
haps the most vulnerable» (Hampton 2012: 228). The police had «ready op-
portunities» for corruption because they were responsible for issuing licenses
to «massage parlours, dancing schools, public dance halls, billiard room and
money changers» (Jones, Vagg 2007: 358). Corruption syndicates operated
among the police, so that regular payments from illegal gambling establish-
ments, for example, were distributed among officers.
   Hong Kong has been seen as the world’s best example of «successful trans-
formation from widespread corruption in the 1960s to clean government in
the 1970s» (Manion 2004: 2). A key element in this success was precise de-
marcation between legal practices and illegal corruption. For example, to
avoid being punishable as bribery, acceptable gifts to government officials
were limited by value. Administration, at least in Weberian forms, requires
sharp boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable practices.


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IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                     93


   It was thought crucial to limit official discretion among officers that
worked at street level. In 1960, Governor Robert Black wrote that «the exer-
cise of discretionary power by junior officers is inevitably open to abuse.
When we begin a revision of the laws ... it is intended to pay particular atten-
tion to those laws which give discretion to junior officers 1». Anti-corruption
is often thought to be best achieved through reducing opportunities for cor-
ruption. Setting out clear procedures for how governmental work should be
done reduces discretion. A report of the Advisory Committee on Corruption
stated that a key response to corruption problems was that «licensing proce-
dures have been simplified, accelerated and clarified». Licensing should be
closely examined and reformed because «procedural delays could cause cor-
ruption in some form or other. The Organizational Survey Unit is also contin-
ually seeking ways of improving procedures, forms, etc». Corruption is thus
seen to result from informality of governmental practice, particularly when
government officials are in regular contact with the public.
   Discretion by government agents has often been seen as a source of differ-
ential justice discriminating in favor of the majority or the powerful and
against minorities and stigmatized groups. It is also sometimes seen as un-
avoidable if street level bureaucrats are to be able to effectively perform their
jobs. Formalizing rules for state officers does not necessarily end discretion,
but may instead tend to displace it to less regulated fields or practices. The
outcomes of administrative efforts to reduce discretion by street-level bu-
reaucrats vary greatly by the specific nature of the position, and the practical
power of those officials to control information, among other variables.
   Ironically, clear definitions of legal process may have detrimental out-
comes as well as benefits. Turning grey areas into sharp divisions between le-
gal and illegal may foster unscrupulous but mostly legal behaviors of collu-
sion. Precisely formulated procedures can reduce the risks involved in profit-
ing from public office, in ways that are often seen by the public as illicit even
when formally legal. Those with power can cross the line more easily with
less risk. Ending illegal corruption may encourage legal forms of collusion.
Opportunistic rent-seekers may find it easier to skirt closer to legal limits
while still being safely on the legal side when that side is explicitly inscribed.
In such circumstances they can adhere only to the letter of the law, without
concern for its “spirit”. Exact formalization of what counts as corrupt may
make things worse for ordinary people, or anyone who cannot afford lawyers.
Sharp boundaries between legal and illegal may offer more impunity for
those trying to game the system. The rich and powerful have access to re-
sources that help them manipulate technicalities.
1. Quotes without citations are all from archival documents accessed at the Hong Kong
Public Records Office.

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   Even when no formal rules are broken, there are many ways in which gov-
ernment and business can (and do) cooperate in ways seen by many mem-
bers of the public as immoral or illicit. I refer here to forms of collusion that
are technically legal but meet widespread public disapproval. Anger at gov-
ernment has soared in the United States and elsewhere. Yet, interactions me-
diated through what Janine Wedel (2009) calls the «shadow elite» have so
much influence as to make public disapproval usually ineffective.
   No government can operate without discretion. Administrators, like
judges, must operate on the basis of judgements about what is best to do
when there is no obvious choice presenting itself. What is possible, however,
is to move the locus of discretion farther up the bureaucratic hierarchy, as
happened in Hong Kong after 1972. It clearly had many positive outcomes,
reducing the weight of petty extortion on Hong Kong’s people, helping to re-
store a degree of public trust in the colonial government, and creating a rep-
utation for reliable rule of law that helped to make Hong Kong one of the
world’s most important financial centres.
   The particular kinds of anti-corruption interventions may have set the
scene for spectacular corruption scandals at the very top of the government
hierarchy, such as the conviction in 2014 of Rafael Hui, the chief secretary
for administration from 2005 to 2007, the second highest ranking position in
the government, for taking bribes from a property company. His boss, Donald
Tsang, was convicted of misconduct in public office in 2017. My argument is
not that stopping the petty corruption at the bottom of the bureaucracy
pushed it upwards, like squeezing a balloon. Rather it is that the cost/benefit
calculations put in place by anti-corruption meant that if you are going to
take a chance by engaging in corrupt behavior, it better be well worth it, and
the reduction of discretion at the bottom of the ranks means that they do not
usually have such opportunities. However, the more fundamental problem
besetting contemporary Hong Kong is not illegal corruption so much as
(mostly) legal collusion, which has emerged for a complicated set of reasons
related to the complex post-1997 processes of governance (Fong 2013).
   Equating informality with society, and its regulation with government, ob-
scures all of these processes, at best individualizing corrupt acts and empha-
sizing “more of the same” in applying more formality within governmental
procedures. Only by recognizing that governmental informality is pervasive
and deserving of analysis in the same terms as societal informality can we
move forward in understanding both formalization and informalization.




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IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                     95




REFERENCES

Fong, Brian CH., 2013, State-Society Conflicts under Hong Kong’s Hybrid Regime,
      Asian Survey, 53, 5:854-882.
Gupta, Akhil, 2012, Red tape: Bureaucracy, structural violence, and poverty in India,
      Durham, Duke University Press.
Hampton, Mark, 2012, British legal culture and colonial governance: The attack on
      corruption in Hong Kong, 1968-1974, Britain and the World, 5, 2: 223-239.
Jones, Carol A. G., John Vagg, 2007, Criminal justice in Hong Kong, New York,
      Routledge.
Manion, Melanie, 2004, Corruption by Design: Building Clean Government in Mainland
      China and Hong Kong, Cambridge, Harvard University Press.
Smart, Alan, Filippo M. Zerilli, 2014, Extralegality, in A Companion to Urban
      Anthropology, Donald M. Nonini, ed, Malden, Wiley-Blackwell: 222-238.
Wedel, Janine, 2009, Shadow Elite: How the World’s New Power Brokers Undermine
      Democracy, Government, and the Free Market, New York, Basic Books.




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IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                        97




“Sharing economy” versus “informal sector”
Jakarta’s motorbike taxi industry in turmoil

Mechthild VON VACANO
Freie Universität Berlin




ABSTRACT: Comparing conventional motor bike taxi services in Jakarta (ojek) to their recent
online-based competitors (GoJek), this paper contrasts a prime example of the classic
“informal sector” with newly emerging forms of the “sharing economy”. It challenges the
notion of “informal economy” as an umbrella concept for such two different business
models.




   In cities across the globe the rise of ridesharing apps has challenged, if not
radically altered the taxi industry in recent years. The Indonesian capital is
no exception to this development. However, the largest turmoil in Jakarta’s
transportation system was not created by the advent of any global player, nor
did it occur in the formal taxi industry. It was the advent of GoJek, a home-
grown ridesharing app for two-wheelers, that shook the local motorbike taxi
industry in early 2015. The company’s name plays upon the English verb “to
go” and the local term for motor bike taxi (ojek), invoking just the right
amount of innovative globality and local flavour. Soon after, the Malaysian-
based company Grab followed suit and released its own motorbike taxi ser-
vice GrabBike, despite its original focus on the regular ridesharing market in
the region. Several minor companies followed, even Uber joined eventually. It
was, however, the pioneer GoJek that first conquered the market over the
mid-year 2015, exciting its consumers with irresistibly cheap promotion
schemes. Conventional ojek drivers soon felt threatened by this rapidly ex-
panding new business model. Banding together in protest, they put up ban-
ners across the city warning online-based ojek drivers to enter “their” territo-
ries; some even resorted to physical violence.
   Unlike regular four-wheel taxis, motorbike taxis do not constitute a formal
mode of public transportation, but have always belonged to the informal
transportation sector. The expansion of ridesharing companies into this sec-

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tor therefore fundamentally differs from the informalisation processes it is
causing in the regular taxi industries. The two competing models of motor
bike taxi services in Jakarta represent different forms of informal employ-
ment, the classical “informal sector” versus the recent “sharing economy”. A
brief comparison of these two models will lead me to question the usefulness
of “informal economy” as an overarching concept for such different eco-
nomic operational modes.

Conventional versus application based ojek services
   In Jakarta just as anywhere else in Indonesia motorbike taxis serve as a
common means of transportation. Most effectively cutting through the capi-
tal’s infamous traffic jams, ojek have become an essential mode of public
transportation for many of the 30 million residents of the Jakarta metropoli-
tan area. Legally, though, ojek operate outside the law: Ever since their emer-
gence in the 1970s, motorbike taxis have never gained legal status as a
means of public transport. This distinguishes them from regular taxis, and
various forms of motorized three-wheelers which are recognized under the
Indonesian law on traffic and land transportation (No 22/2009) as «unsched-
uled public transportation». After early attempts of banishing had failed, ojek
services have been tolerated by local administration and law enforcement
since decades. Their waiting posts (pangkalan) are highly visible, located on
strategically important entry and transit points throughout the city. But
these waiting posts are more than mere physical shelters, they are informal
institutions organising ojek services and regulating the market by distinct
membership rules and a codex of territory-based coexistence.
   This informal market regulation was disturbed by the advent of companies
offering application-based ojek services. Anyone possessing a motorbike and
proper documents could register as a driver with these companies, while the
new ways of online customer communication undercut the territorial organi-
zation of pangkalan. The hardest blow, however, came from the price dump-
ing initiated by GoJek’s first promotional during the Fasting Month of 2015:
10.000 IDR, roughly 70 European Cent, flat price for any destination within a
25 km radius. A conventional ojek driver would start at 5.000 IDR for a short
distance trip and easily charge 40.000 IDR or more for a 25 km ride. For Go-
Jek drivers these promotional offers were equally lucrative, since the com-
pany compensated the regular fare, then 4.000 IDR per kilometre. The Ra-
madhan offer was the onset of GoJek’s market conquest and the beginning of
a long and fierce price war between the big emerging ridesharing players. Go-


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IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                    99


Jek and GrabBike were soon joined by American ridesharing giant Uber re-
leasing its own Uber Motor service, because the company did not want to
miss out on this highly promising market in the largest economy in South-
east Asia.
   The sudden expansion of an online-based ojek industry also raised con-
cerns within the formal transportation industry. In late 2015 its representa-
tives demanded the ban of any app-based ojek service, charging the platform
providers with coordination of an illegal form of public transport. Meanwhile
associations of ojek drivers called for the legalization and regulation of the
motorbike taxi industry. The controversial debate culminated in an official
statement by President Joko Widodo, in which he explicitly proclaimed a tol-
erating stance towards the ojek industry in general, and its application-based
innovation in particular. For the context of Jakarta especially one argument
prevailed: As long as the city’s formal public transport system fails to pro-
vide effective service to its citizens, motorbike taxis and especially the “mod-
ern” app-based ojek services are temporally needed. While the possibility of
full legal recognition resurfaces in ongoing debates, any kind of ojek services
in the meantime remain somewhere in the spectrum of «extralegality»
(Smart, Zerilli 2014): illegal in the strict sense, but officially tolerated - even
explicitly today.

When the “sharing economy” enters the “informal sector”
   In analytic terms, conventional and application-based ojek represent two
different poles within the broad range of practices subsumed under the term
“informal economy”. From popular culture to politics: ojek drivers serve as
emblematic representation of the “informal sector” in its original sense (cf.
Hart 1973). In dealing with ojek, local administrations perpetuate the image
of the “urban poor”: The toleration of ojek services is justified on purely so-
cial grounds, while any policy to support ojek drivers is framed as “poverty
reduction” measurement. When entering the market, GoJek founder Nadiem
Makarim was certainly wise to strike the same paternalistic tone and frame
his company’s mission in social terms: to empower informal sector workers
by offering ojek drivers a platform to effectively find clientele and reduce un-
productive waiting time.
   The business model of GoJek, Grab or Uber is covered under the common,
though highly debated term ”sharing economy”. More accurately, they repre-
sent the for-profit branch of peer-to-peer online platforms (Schor 2016: 11),
which have lead Arun Sundararajan (2016) to introduce the term «crowd-
based capitalism». The conditions of this crowd-based capitalism are in


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many ways informal, since they undermine employment standards of the for-
mal economy. Yet in comparison to its original offline counterpart, online-
based ojek services have led to some degree of formalization regarding em-
ployment and service, while simultaneously de-regulating the market.
    Officially, the online platforms are registered as technology companies
and ‘partner’ with self-employed ojek drivers. To register with any of the
companies requires a range of documents, which are sometimes difficult to
produce for those used to working in the informal sector. Registered drivers
are charged a service fee, GoJek for example cuts 20 percent. Company man-
agement determines the rules and fixes the pricing schemes, drivers there-
fore find themselves in a position of dependent self-employment. Reduction
of fares and performance bonuses have repeatedly led GoJek or GrabBike
drivers to protest their management. Form a customer’s point of view, online
platforms have formalized ojek services: Instead of them having to haggle
over fares with drivers, the application would calculate fares in advance. Ad-
ditionally, all major players provide accident insurance for passengers and
drivers. Drivers must comply with company rules and are held accountable
for their service quality by customer feedback on their personal online pro-
file. These shifts towards formalization were accompanied by the de-regula-
tion of the ojek service market. Even though conventional ojek services have
operated beyond governmental control, they were still regulated by the
pangkalan system, based on communal neighbourhood structures and often
connected to informal local authorities.

Concluding remarks
   Can the working conditions of conventional ojek drivers and those of ne-
oliberal crowed-based capitalism thus be grasped by the same analytical con-
cept of “informal economy”? Based on the brief comparison above, I argue
that the structural differences by far overshadow the commonalities, which
are limited to their negative distinction from “formal employment”. The con-
ceptual expansion of “informal economy” from those economic activities,
that exist beyond the scope or will of state intervention, to neoliberal forms
of de-regulation, where the right to free market interaction is guaranteed by
the state, has left the seal of “formal economy” for a (historically) specific,
welfare-oriented state-corporation-market relation. All changes brought by
neoliberalization had to be absorbed conceptually by the informal. We do not
need to regress to the stereotypical understanding of an informal sector, that
stands for the resourceful ways to make a living practiced by the urban poor


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IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                    101


in the Global South. But we need to leave some conceptual space for the “un-
ruly” as opposed to the “de-regulated” and for non-state actors, such as local
communities, as alternative regulative institutions. While at the same time,
it is necessary to update and diversify our understanding of the formal to in-
clude governmental techniques and non-state actors, such as corporate in-
stitutions, as sources of formality.


REFERENCES
Hart, Keith, 1973, Informal income opportunities and urban employment in Ghana,
      Journal of Modern African Studies, 11, 1: 61-89.
Schor, Juliet, 2016, Debating the sharing economy, Journal of Self-Governance and
      Management Economics, 4, 3: 7-22.
Smart, Alan, Filippo M. Zerilli, 2014, Extralegality, in A companion to urban anthro-
      pology, Donald M. Nonini, ed, Malden, MA, Wiley-Blackwell: 222-238.
Sundararajan, Arun, 2016, The sharing economy. The end of employment and the rise
      of crowd-based capitalism, Cambridge & London, MIT Press.




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IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                           103




Expertise and adventure
In/formalization processes within EU rule of law capacity building
programs

Filippo M. ZERILLI
University of Cagliari
Julie TRAPPE
Independent scholar




ABSTRACT: This paper explores dynamics of formalization and informalization as interlinked
social processes as a contribution to a critical understanding of rule of law capacity building
programs in the framework of EU enlargement policy. It also challenges the assumption
according to which informality would be a modality characteristic of countries of the “Global
South”.




   The concept of “informal economy” was forged in the framework of
development studies (Hart 1973). While it has been – and is often still –
uncritically employed to refer to a distinct, separate “sector” from the formal
economy, it is widely recognized today that informal practices permeate the
formal economy (Guha-Khasnobis, Kanbur, Ostrom 2007). A significant
contribution to a critical assessment of informality as a process linked to
formal practices came from the anthropological scrutiny of the legal/illegal
divide (e.g. Heyman 2013), a pervasive dichotomization recently complicated
by “extralegality”, a broader conceptual framework referring to diverse kind
of social processes in which collective and individual agents and institutions
interact, favour and/or contrast the production of both, formality and
informality in given social contexts (Smart, Zerilli 2014).
   Drawing on ideas and ethnographic material developed while doing
fieldwork within EU-funded legal cooperation projects – formerly in
Romania, and more recently in Kosovo – in this commentary we focus on dia-
lectics and tensions between formalization and informalization as inter-


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104                                       ALAN SMART, JOSEPHINE SMART, FILIPPO M. ZERILLI (EDS)


linked social processes. We notably explore how dynamics of in/formalization
may serve to penetrate logics and mechanisms of programs and projects of
justice development, and particularly the diffusion of a certain legal culture
under the “rule of law” umbrella concept.
   While a number of authors have began to unpack the concept of rule of
law itself, seeing it as a historical, cultural artefact of and for governmental,
domination, and other exploitative practices captured by the idea of
“plunder” (Mattei, Nader 2008), we suggest to look at rule of law as a
commodity exchanged across the global legal marketplace. A market where
legal knowledge, expertise and consultancy are exported and imported,
offered, and in fact traded from countries of the “Global North” – aka the
donors, each in competition with each other – towards countries of the
“Global South” – the beneficiaries of international aid, struggling for
recognition – in the form of projects and programs of legal development. The
challenge we take, hence, is to bring current reflections on in/formality as
social process back to (legal) development studies, notably in the framework
of rule of law capacity building programs.
   Prishtina, capital and largest city of Kosovo, Europe’s youngest state.
Especially the summer from early in the morning till late evening a plethora
of bars and cafes around the city centre are plenty of people having their
macchiato, a very tasty coffee. Stereotypes about Kosovar Albanians insist on
their laziness. Their ability “to work” in cafes is often object of jokes and self-
ironies. Actually, the tremendous number of meetings held in cafes is an
important aspect of the projects’ social life and indeed an opportunity to
develop the projects in which “locals” and “internationals” cooperate. From
apparently innocent, ironic comments the tone of the conversation may
suddenly shift to serious observations. While discussing about the
organization of a seminar for a project, a young official of the Kosovo
Ministry of justice says: «Do they [the internationals] really think they can
just come here in their imperialistic way? They don’t respect my country. They
don’t know anything about us – and they want to tell us, how to make our
country better? No, you cannot bring rule of law like this!» (emphasis added).
   Since the end of the Cold War the world-hegemonic legal regime known as
the rule of law has increasingly driven privatization, marketization and
democratization programs, notably across the region interested by the EU
enlargement policy. According to the EU, «the rule of law is the backbone of
any modern constitutional democracy. It is one of the founding principles
stemming from the common constitutional traditions of all the Member


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IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                      105


States of the EU and, as such, one of the main values upon which the Union
is based. Respect for the rule of law is a precondition for EU membership»
(emphasis added)1. But how such precondition is achieved in actual practice,
if ever? And how respect for the rule of law as a precondition for EU
membership intersects with the “respect for my country” from the vantage
point of people belonging to beneficiary administrations?
   Among several other instruments, the EU adopted the Twinning, an
institutional building tool designed to develop cooperation between public
administrations of EU member states and of beneficiary (candidate or
potentially candidate) countries2. A considerable part of the EU budget for
enlargement is allocated for developing rule of law capacity building
programs across the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance region (IPA) 3.
Drafting a Twinning call for proposal and the application itself are rigidly
formalized procedures. The competition among applicant countries,
however, is often influenced by extralegal practices, notably the unique
political and economic relationships certain member states have established
with IPA region countries. For a member state, “to win” a project means to
get financial resources and the opportunity to exercise a considerable power
influence on the ground, notably on the way the legal system of a beneficiary
country could be shaped, with significant economic consequences including
financial investments, joint ventures and commercial partnerships.
   The backbone of Twinning are usually two project leaders – one on behalf
of the EU member state leading the project, the other of the beneficiary
administration – a “Resident Twinning Adviser” (RTA) from a EU member
state and his local counterpart. The RTA is usually assisted by two salaried
“locals”: an assistant and a translator. The general aim of a Twinning is to
provide support for the transposition, implementation and enforcement of
the EU legislation (the EU acquis). Hundred pages of EU-law have to be
translated in another language and transposed into a national legal
framework, finding the best solution in structure and wording. In this
process of legal harmonization «law is not mathematics», as one RTA
observes. In order to transpose and translate a legal provision different

1. See Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council. A new
EU Framework to strengthen the Rule of Law, available at http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52014DC0158R(01) (accessed on 12/11/2017).
2. See htps://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/tenders/twinning_en (accessed on
12/11/2017).
3. The IPA region includes Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the former Yugoslav
Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey.

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106                                       ALAN SMART, JOSEPHINE SMART, FILIPPO M. ZERILLI (EDS)


solutions are possible: «You cannot imagine the fights behind the façade!
Even within the EU, member state countries are fighting for their own
solution!», the same informant suggests. Interestingly, while disagreements
and controversies are relevant for understanding the actual implementation
of projects and their final outcome, the conflictual dimension does not
appear in official documents. Divergent opinions regarding how to face an
accident or to address a technical issue are average during unofficial
meetings, email exchanges, and cell phone conversations. Those informal
negotiations, however, perceived as ubiquitous and «quite exhausting!», in
the words of one expert, are carefully removed from the project reports. «It is
a long way to negotiate a report. A considerable amount of time is spent
writing reports in order to find the correct wording», the same expert adds.
Not infrequently, the project leaders in charge of the report are asked by EU
representatives to rewrite this or that section in order to make it consistent
with the original blueprint, its structure and wording such as “terms of
reference”, “assumptions”, “local ownership”, and so on. Similarly, under the
current EU audit regime, a work plan has to be implemented, benchmarks
have to be fulfilled, reports to be written, documents to be produced,
visibility guarantee, sustainability assured. As Riles (1998) has observed for
similar cases of negotiations of international agreements, matters of “form”
(i.e. aesthetics) appear more important than questions of “meaning”.
    Frequently glossed as “internationals”, experts working for Twinning
programs are experienced legal practitioners from EU member states.
Typically they are legal professionals, judges, prosecutors or academics with
a permanent position in their home country public administration. In our
experience they are often male close to retirement age, who feel flattered by
the opportunity to provide their job with an international dimension:
«working as an expert here [in Kosovo] is a chance to give an international
turn to my career», said one expert. In addition to several benefits,
internationals often show themselves enthusiastic and proud to turn their
knowledge and longstanding legal experience at the service of “developing
democracies”. Beyond such moral implications, many of them consider
working as a consultant in a country like Kosovo an adventurous, exotic
experience: «Isn’t our life more interesting and exciting here?», an expert
observes and immediately responds: «Oh, how boring it will be, when back in
my country office!». Obviously, money is another important factor: the
payment due for a mission abroad is usually very convenient comparing to
the salary the same expert would earn in the home country.


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IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                 107


   International experts cooperate with “locals”, namely officials and civil
servants of beneficiary public administrations, usually professionals with a
university background in law. While at least in principle experts from EU
member states and officials from candidate countries share the same
commitment (as prescribed by the Twinning manual itself), their actual
collaboration is challenged by their structurally unequal position in the
project in terms of roles, access to the project’s budget and capacity to
influence the project’s implementation. In fact, the Twinning does not allow
recruitment of local officials in the role of paid experts. Logics and rhetoric
of cooperation and learning by doing on which the Twinning is based
reserves to the locals (and only to some of them) the opportunity to take part
to seminars and “study visits”, the latter being educational initiatives
organized by representatives of the EU member state in their home country
and institutions. These are often also occasions for tourism and leisure, and
are perceived by locals as a source of revenue in addition to the modest
salary of the beneficiary public administration. As anticipated, major
discrepancies between locals and internationals concern their different
retribution and what they actually “get” from participating in a project. If we
look at the average budget of a Twinning project (typically from € 1.2 to 2.0
million) from an accounting perspective, roughly 80% of the total amount of
the expenses goes for the RTA salary, the short- and long-term experts’ fees.
In other words, as one RTA observes, «the money goes back to EU member
state representatives, instead of reaching the beneficiary country», as one
might expect.
   Interestingly, although these structural inequalities affect the actual
collaboration and the everyday project’s social life, there seems to be a non-
spoken mutual agreement between “locals” and “internationals”. Beyond the
effectiveness of the projects and irrespective of their actual outcomes all
actors involved share the idea that new projects have to be launched and
ongoing missions extended. This is cynically summarised by a local
informant as the common interest «to keep the sick person sick». A full
recovery of the patient would not justify any further aid intervention of
assistance reducing a number of opportunities (including salaries for local
staff, benefits for the local economy and infrastructure like hotels, taxis and
restaurants etc.) for many of the actors actively involved in making the rule
of law a commodity to be exchanged and traded across the legal marketplace,
at both local and global level.


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108                                       ALAN SMART, JOSEPHINE SMART, FILIPPO M. ZERILLI (EDS)


   To conclude, ethnography among “internationals” and “locals” actively
involved in the legal marketplace also shows that assigning to countries of
the “Global North” the role of providers of legal rationality and formal
procedures for countries in the “Global South”, the latter being presumably
“affected” by informal, traditional, and often corrupt practices is a
misleading ideological assumption, albeit persistent in both popular and
academic discourse. An insider view of the legal marketplace rather suggests
that formal and informal practices and processes, their intricacies and
uneven configurations permeate the actual implementation of the
cooperation projects, beyond the local/international divide.


REFERENCES
Guha-Khasnobis, Basudeb, Ravi Kanbur, Elinor Ostrom, eds, 2007, Linking the formal
      and informal economy. Concepts and policies, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Hart, Keith, 1973, Informal income opportunities and urban employment in Ghana,
      Journal of Modern African Studies, 11, 1: 61-89.
Heyman, Josiah McC., 2013, The study of illegality and legality: Which way for-
      ward?, PoLAR, 36, 2: 304-307.
Mattei, Ugo, Laura Nader, 2008, Plunder: When the rule of law is illegal, London, Rou-
      tledge.
Riles, Annelise, 1998, Infinity within the brackets, American Ethnologist, 25, 3: 378-
      398.
Smart, Alan, Filippo M. Zerilli, 2014, Extralegality, in A companion to urban anthro-
      pology, Donald M. Nonini, ed, Malden, MA, Wiley-Blackwell: 222-238.




2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2017: 103-108
