‘Milking The Elephant’: Financial Markets as Real Markets in Kenya

Financial liberalization policies in the 1990s were intended to raise formal sector interest rates, enhance competition and expand access for users. This article investigates patterns of provision and use in a local financial market in Karatina, Kenya, at the end of the 1990s after a period of financial and economic liberalization. It takes a holistic approach, examining both formal and informal financial arrangements and microfinance interventions. This is because the role of the informal financial sector is particularly important for poor people and has received relatively little attention in the discussion of the consequences of reform. The author does this using a ‘real’ markets approach that sees markets as socially regulated and structured. Significant provision by the mutual sector (formal and informal), and poor lending performance by the banking sector is explained through an examination of the characteristics of the services on offer and their embeddedness in social relations, culture and politics.     

Formalizing the Informal Sector: Barriers and Costs

This article uses material from a series of case studies conducted in Latin America to analyse various aspects of the formalization of the informal sector. In particular, it examines the legal and bureaucratic barriers confronting informal sector micro-enterprises which seek to become part of the formal, legal circuit, and assesses the costs in time and money which are involved in the formalization process. The process itself is seen as consisting of two elements — achieving legality and retaining that status over time — each of which involves certain bureaucratic and financial demands. While recognizing that the requirements for formalization can represent a burden in some cases, the main finding of the article is that the procedures and related costs vary between countries to such a degree that it is impossible to claim, as some earlier studies have done, that disproportionate regulation and bureaucracy constitute an insurmountable obstacle to the legalization of informal sector enterprises.     

非正规就业视角下的制造业空间重构——基于2000、2010年地级及以上城市的实证研究

我国制造业的空间重构不仅表现为整体格局和职能强度的变化,更体现在内部构成要素的分化上。我国从事制造业的正规与非正规从业人员比例由2000年的41.7:58.3转变为2010年的29.3:70.7。两者的空间结构差异明显,非正规就业密度由沿海向内陆逐步递减,而正规就业在内陆省会城市存在明显高地。本文分析了制造业重构过程中的六类城市及其分布变化。研究表明,全球化进程和就业门槛显著促进了非正规就业增长;非正规就业也与经济发展存在共生关系,但与制度环境并无显著关联;此外廉价劳动力、市场可达性与规模经济对制造业的区位选择具有显著影响。     

Global Liquidity,the Private Sector and Debt Sustainability in Sub‐Saharan Africa

This article analyses the effect of changes in international financial markets on the debt dynamics in sub‐Saharan Africa in recent years. A key development is the rise of the private sector as both a lender and a borrower in African debt markets, a process that is associated with the growing integration of the region into global financial markets. The article argues that the Debt Sustainability Framework of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank has taken some steps to account for this growth of private sector, cross‐border debt, but such steps still fall short of what is needed. A full appreciation of the importance of private debt implies, first, that debt sustainability in sub‐Saharan Africa be understood in the context of countries’ integration in global financial markets and the global liquidity cycles that characterize those markets and, second, that the interplay between private and public debt be monitored in order to provide a fuller picture of the impact of private sector debt on fiscal sustainability.     

Crisis,Informalization and the Urban Informal Sector in Sub-Saharan Africa

Neo-liberal theories of informality have emphasized the potential of the informal sector for independent employment creation and growth. An alternative perspective is provided by the structuralist ‘informalization’ approach which regards the expansion of informal activity as part of the restructuring strategy of the formal sector in the face of economic recession. The informalization perspective challenges the traditional notions of the informal sector by focusing on such issues as differentiation, social networks, subcontracting and supply linkages with the formal sector, and the role of the state in informal sector expansion. Despite its First World and Latin American focus, the informalization approach offers important insights for the study of urban informal sectors in Africa.     

扎根理论视角下旅游非正式部门成长路径——以安徽西递古村为例

以安徽西递古村的旅游非正式部门为研究对象,运用扎根理论研究方法,通过聚焦编码、轴心编码、理论编码三步骤,分析案例地旅游非正式部门的成长路径。研究发现:1旅游非正式部门发展在符合生命周期基本理论基础上,具有新特色。随着阶段推进,主导影响因素由单一向多元转变,外部影响因素的作用力愈渐加强。2精英带动在旅游非正式部门发展起步阶段起主导作用并以粗放开发为特色;利益驱动下旅游非正式部门过度扩张使得同质竞争激烈化,经营边际收益减少;家庭结构与社区影响造成经营固化与惯性,社会政策带来经营萎缩,经营者试图通过寻租及名望身份赋加的形式改变困境,增强对经济之外的其他诉求(如名望、人际),促进了旅游非正式部门对自我身份重新审视与再定位。3社区力量在市场饱和后以隐性道德伦理手段维持既有市场结构平衡状态,成为市场竞争调控手段新补充。     

Conceptualizing the Survival Sector in Madagascar

Abstract: This article calls for the recognition of a subsector of the informal economy, which is conceptualized as the “survival sector”. Based on empirical evidence from Antananarivo, Madagascar it is suggested that beggars, street children and other marginalized people constitute a separate, non‐productive subsector of the economy, which is also distinguishable from formal and informal economies because of other aspects, such as the character of its social and economic networks, survival strategies, patterns of social and physical mobility, and the social and public spaces occupied. Given the vast number of marginalized people in the world, it seems useful to consider a survival sector of its own that is, despite interlinkages, fundamentally different from other components of the informal economy.     

Informal housing,spatial structure,and city compactness

This paper develops a monocentric city model with a formal and an informal sector in the housing industry. While formal developers build houses renting land from landowners, informal developers use land for free. However, informal developers must incur defensive expenditures to avoid government intervention. In equilibrium, at any distance of the central business district (CBD), informal developers use land until the value of the marginal productivity of land equals the defensive expenditures per unit of land. The model shows the land allocated to produce short informal (tall formal) buildings increases (decreases) with distance to the CBD. Thus, the model introduces a new source of spatial variation of building height. The model also shows that a higher level of informal housing increases the spatial size of a city and reduces the height of its buildings.     

The Underside of Microfinance: Performance Indicators and Informal Debt in Cambodia

Microfinance is a dominant strategy used to promote rural development around the world. Rather than directly track its impact on borrowers, however, microfinance institutions rely on indicators of financial performance adopted from commercial banking as proxies for positive social impact. Yet, as critical research has shown, the industry depends on coercive peer pressure, social shaming and various forms of gendered exploitation to achieve its high rates of loan repayment. This article maintains that there is a need to investigate how the microfinance industry's own indicators of impact contribute to the ways microfinance can harm borrowers. Based on qualitative research in Cambodia during 2021 and 2022, the article demonstrates how financial performance indicators, most notably portfolio quality, both hide and exacerbate the ways that borrowers juggle debt between formal and informal lenders. In making this argument, the article advances critical scholarship on microfinance by showing how microfinance repayment structures debt-juggling practices in ways that put borrowers at greater risk of over-indebtedness. As a result, the microfinance industry is able to claim that it successfully helps to alleviate poverty, even as it accumulates profits by appropriating wealth from poor and low-income households across the global South.     

Informal markets and global value chains – the disembedding of Romanian dairy smallholders

The Romanian dairy-farming sector is marked by subsistence and semi-subsistence farms. Through consolidation in the retail and dairy sector, the price pressure has moved toward producers of raw milk. Through new European, national and private standards and global actors tapping into the Romanian market this development is reinforced. At the same time, the smallholders, formerly accepted to be acting on an informal level, cannot access their main distribution channels anymore. Additionally, through several legal constraints being developed since Romania’s accession to the European Union, the smallholders are neither able to issue invoices, nor to access certain subsidy programmes as they are not considered juridical persons. This article focuses on the consequences of this disembedding of farmers. The peasants are pushed toward informal activities or value chain positions, in which they do not have any bargaining power with the globally sourcing intermediaries they are supplying. The contemporary approaches of global value chains and global production networks build the theoretical framework for the study. Here it is argued that informal markets must be included into these approaches more concisely.     

Politics,Society and Financial Liberalization: Turkey in the 1990s

This article focuses on the political economy of Turkey in the 1990s to illustrate the importance of analysing economic variables that intersect with the quality of political democracy. In 1989, the debt‐ridden state moved to systematically and completely deregulate Turkey’s financial markets. Together with the ongoing processes of liberalizing commodity markets and integrating with global capital markets, financial liberalization was expected to achieve fiscal and monetary stability, stimulate business confidence to invest in productive sectors, produce stable growth, encourage privatization and control inflation. However, the new hegemony of the capital markets has gone hand‐in‐hand with deteriorating macroeconomic performance, a worsening income distribution, the discrediting of politics and its isolation from society. The authors examine several key dynamics which are helping to legitimate the neoliberal agenda of the 1990s. These include the distribution of state largesse to manipulate electoral capitalism; the rise of an informal sector in the ‘Anatolian Tigers’; promotion of the seductive attractions of the market; and an antipolitical reform populism adopted by political actors to exploit popular disillusionment with the political system.     

传授、规训与共享:非正规旅游经营者的群体学习与知识流动

不同于精英阶层获取知识的正式教育模式，以非正规群体为代表的社会基层群体更多依靠非正式教育渠道实现知识技能的学习。本文将广州电视塔周边的非正规旅游摄影经营者作为研究对象，在个体访谈和非参与式观察的基础上采用质性研究方法探究其知识技能学习与管理的过程。研究发现非正规旅游经营群体的知识学习表现出明显的集体行为特征，知识在群体组织网络中高度依靠关系导向实现流动共享，并且在群体内部形成了“核心-次核心-边缘”的等级体系，知识的流动又被作为维护等级权威的规训管理手段反作用于群体组织。此外，群体通过知识技能的标准化来增强集体的共享互惠效果，形成非正规旅游经营群体“自下而上”的群体学习与知识流动的有力保障。     

Gender and Household Economic Strategies in Rural Appalachia

In recent decades, many Appalachian households have experienced declining incomes due to the loss of traditional male jobs in the mining and manufacturing sectors. One response to this decline has been an increase in female employment in formal sector activities. Another response is homework, or the home-based production of goods and services for sale in the formal and informal sectors. In rural Appalachia, where formal jobs are often unavailable or inadequate to support a household, many women are engaging in homework as an economic strategy. Consequently, economic restructuring cannot be fully understood without analyzing household strategies and gender relations. This paper examines the intersection of gender, households, and economic restructuring as it relates to women's homework and employment shifts in rural Appalachia. Research for this paper entailed qualitative interviews with 50 West Virginia women who are engaged in the home-based production of goods and services. The study analyzes the variety of homework activities done by rural women, their contribution to household incomes, and the effect of these activities on gender relations and divisions of labor in the home. The research forwarded in this study advances a conceptual understanding of household economic strategies and has some practical applications for women and economic development in underdeveloped regions .     

Social Networks and Actual Knowledge Flow in the Irish Biotech Industry

This paper presents an analysis of networks among small and medium-sized enterprises in the Irish biotech sector. The study applies social network analysis to determine the structure of networks of company directors and inventors in the biotech sector. In addition, on the basis of interviews, this article analyses the extent of actual knowledge flow through these industry networks. The paper makes both a theoretical and methodological contribution to innovation network research. In relation to theory, the findings of the social network analysis indicate that the extent and path of knowledge flow are influenced by both the type of knowledge in question and whether the network is of a formal or informal nature. Methodologically, the results of this paper raise questions about the application of social network analysis in innovation studies.     

Caring for ethics and the politics of health care reform in the United States

It is increasingly recognized that the work of (unpaid) informal caregivers constitutes an important contribution to care delivery in the United States and in many other societies. Accounting for the range of social, economic and political circumstances in which this care is produced has become the focus of a number of academics and others theorizing the ‘third sector’, or the ‘social economy’. However, some scholars are concerned that the increasing attention paid to the role of informal economic activity will either legitimate neoliberal state withdrawal from social reproduction or facilitate continued invasive commodification of relationships that were formerly part of social life. While these are possible dangers, J.K. Gibson-Graham's diverse economy framework and theory of community economy allow us to understand the social and economic conditions that support, rather than undermine, a caregiver's fidelity to the process of caring. Given the size of the informal caregiving sector, it would remain an important aspect of the care economy even if the United States developed a national health care system. It is important to understand informal caregivers as economic subjects, with their desires, motivations, hopes and anxieties. What emerges from my qualitative research is an understanding of informal caregivers as ethical subjects who operate best in a network of collective recognition and support. Informal caregivers are neither self-interested economic actors nor (necessarily) victims of failed social support. Rather, they are, potentially, agents of change in a new politics of health care reform.     

Renegotiating the Reproductive Bargain: Gender Analysis of Economic Transition in Cuba in the 1990s

This article argues that Cuba's economic demise following the collapse of the former Soviet Union should be seen as a crisis in reproduction as well as a crisis in consumption and production. Using qualitative field research carried out in 1994 and 1995 in Havana and in the province of Matanzas, the author shows that the commodities and services required for reproduction could no longer be guaranteed through the distribution system of the Cuban state. Consequently, people began to devise a range of survival strategies in order to ensure the reproduction of their households, including trading in unofficial markets, leaving formal employment and engaging in a portfolio of income-generating activities in the informal sector. Such strategies were patterned by the existing sexual division of labour and show a reinforcement of traditional gender roles. The article argues that these changes will have important political as well as economic consequences for Cuba's future.     

广州城市不同行业女性非正规就业者行为空间差异及其影响

女性内部差异性已成为西方女性主义地理学的重要研究领域。本文以广州市下渡村餐饮业和芳村茶叶市场茶艺表演业两个典型行业为例,研究不同行业女性非正规就业者的行为空间差异性及其产生的不同影响。研究发现,餐饮业和茶艺表演业女性非正规就业者具有总体上相类似的行为空间结构,但由于其所从事的工作性质和经济收入不同,该结构在尺度构成、出行活动的距离分布和出行频率等方面存在明显差异。这种差异性进一步对上述两类女性非正规就业者的职业发展分别产生了限制和促进的不同作用。女性非正规就业者所属行业特征、行为空间与职业发展处于一种相互作用的关系。     

Building a Knowledge Economy in Ireland Through European Research Networks

The success of the Irish economy, and the technology sector in particular, over the last decade has been well noted. This article seeks to uncover the role that Irish participation in the ESPRIT programme of the European Union's Fourth Framework Programme has played in the building of Ireland's knowledge economy through its promotion of research collaboration. The primary goal of ESPRIT was the promotion of networking between organizations of similar interest across Europe, and in this article we examine the effects of the imposition of these more formal networks on organizations. The shift towards the promotion of more informal networks among European organizations in the pursuit of innovation is highlighted. After looking at Irish participation in the programme, we gauge the success of various projects and partners, and note the differences between networks, which were in place before participation in ESPRIT, where personal networking was evident, and the more formal networks created by ESPRIT. What becomes most obvious from analysing Irish participation is the conscious move on the part of those networks with a prior existence to advance their own research agenda by means of ESPRIT.     

Marginalized for a lifetime: The everyday experiences of gulag survivors in post-Soviet Magadan

Over the past decade notions of social capital have become embedded in the social development lexicon, often presented as the ‘missing link’ within development theory. Much social capital‐based research takes Robert Putnam's theorization of the subject as its starting point. Putnam's work argues that social capital can be measured by a region's levels of trust and civic engagement. While its use, and conceptualization, has undergone much academic debate, often formal institutions still employ this very narrow, and arguably Western‐centric, reading of the subject. This paper argues that while at the micro‐level social capital has little to do with the civic engagement and trust theories posited by Putnam, it still has relevance to the lives of marginalized individuals and is an important factor in their continued survival. To explore this, drawing on extensive qualitative research conducted in Magadan, Moscow and St Petersburg, I critically examine the construction of everyday survival strategies among Gulag survivors living in Russia's far northeast city of Magadan. Denied a return to their ‘homeland’ upon their release, this group experienced considerable marginalization in the post‐Stalin period. This was exacerbated when the collapse of the Soviet Union saw pensions in the far northeast of Russia fall to below 50% of the state‐set subsistence minimum. The paper demonstrates the importance of social capital to this group by showing how their survival is based on far more than interactions with formal and informal organizations.     

Speculating on Slums: Infrastructural Fixes in Informal Housing in the Global South

In this paper, we seek to revisit earlier work on the theory of rent, situating it in the current period of economic crisis and in relation to informal housing in the global South. More than ever, land is treated as a pure financial asset. Finance capital now exerts a profound influence over the production of space and exposes the built environment to the kinds of speculative binges that we have witnessed over the last decade. This is now as much a feature of living conditions in the poorest settlements of the global South as it is in the financial heartlands of the global North. We question key assumptions behind development interventions by arguing that infrastructural upgrading may decrease the security of tenure of residents of informal housing and call for a more nuanced approach that recognises the (post)colonial histories of urbanisation structuring access to land and housing.