Recrafting in/formality, leveraging public market trade in Baguio, Philippines
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3072
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 intersections of formal/informal and legal/illegal practices.
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B. Lynne Milgram
Anuac
Recrafting in/formality, leveraging public market trade in Baguio, Philippines
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/anuac
6
Forum: In/formalization
2017-12-31
2017-11-24
2017-12-31
2017-12-31
69-75
1
B. Lynne Milgram
2017/12/31
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3072
69
OCAD University, Toronto, Canada
2239-625X
2
en
75
Recrafting in/formality, leveraging public market trade in Baguio, Philippines
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/anuac/article/download/3072/2795
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                                              2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2017: 69-75




                                                                                     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 © B. LYNNE MILGRAM
Recrafting in/formality, leveraging public market trade in Baguio, Philippines
2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2017: 69-75.
ISSN: 2239-625X – DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3072
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).

                                            2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2017: 69-75
70                                            ALAN SMART, JOSEPHINE SMART, FILIPPO M. ZERILLI (EDS)


   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”.


2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2017: 69-75
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.

                                      2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2017: 69-75
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.


2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2017: 69-75
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).

                                      2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2017: 69-75
74                                         ALAN SMART, JOSEPHINE SMART, FILIPPO M. ZERILLI (EDS)


   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.




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




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