Foreword
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3089
Introduction to the Forum by the editors.
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2239-625X
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Filippo M. Zerilli
Anuac
Foreword
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Forum: In/formalization
2017-12-31
2017-12-12
2017-12-31
2017-12-31
45-50
1
Filippo M. Zerilli
2017/12/31
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3089
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Università di Cagliari, Italy
2239-625X
2
en
50
Foreword
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/anuac/article/download/3089/2791
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                                              2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2017: 45-50




                                                                                          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
Foreword
2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2017: 45-50.
ISSN: 2239-625X – DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3089
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.

                                              2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2017: 45-50
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


                                      2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2017: 45-50
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,
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Hart, Keith, 1973, Informal income opportunities and urban employment in Ghana,
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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
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      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
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