The Unionization of Street Traders and the Politics of Informality

• Ogawa Sayaka

  Ritsumeikan University

Bibliographic Information

Other Title

• タンザニアにおける路上商人の組合化とインフォーマル性の政治
• 抗争空間論再考
• Reconsideration of the Theory of Contested Space

Abstract

The issue of street traders chaotically occupying African urban public spaces has drawn increasing attention by researchers as well as urban planning policymakers and citizens. Round-ups of street traders, aimed at moving them to public markets constructed in suburban areas, have incited riots that have been identified as visible manifestations of the latent friction between the state and the informal sector. In the context of urban Africa, “informality” has been discussed as a particular economic activity, with little attention being paid to the relationships between informal economic activities themselves and the informality determined by the urban space management policy. That informality has also been created by an urban space management policy that has—ever since the colonial era—removed certain activities from the city and certain other urban areas due to their “undesirability.” As gentrification progresses and gated communities expand owing to the globalization and modernization of African cities, the size of the spaces freely available there for economic use has dwindled, with a drastic increase in activities deemed “informal.” On account of such circumstances, street traders have come to be regarded not only as symbols of the conflict between the central government, the city authorities, and the ordinary people, but also as symbols of the conflict over urban public space. Research in recent years has positioned the issue of street businesses as the battle between the state, street vendors and civil society for street resources relating to such rights as the right to work, the right to fair labor, passage and transport rights, standard transfer and renting rights, and management rights, with discussions of the formal unionization of street traders within the framework of civil society theory. However, previous studies have neglected to sufficiently discuss the logic behind such everyday practices as an informal sector, including the fluid and flexible creation of people’s livelihoods in uncertain urban spaces, as well as the continuation of formal unionization within a nationally planned economy. Political economists in the 1990’s—who focused on the conflict between the urban informal sector and national or city authorities—evaluated amorphous everyday practices and the improvisational cooperation of an informal economy as political actions, and were skeptical about the sustainability of the organization of the informal sector. What explanation can be made of the formation of static formal organizations to continue amorphous everyday economic practices, which occupy the street in a chaotic fashion? (View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)

Journal

• Japanese Journal of Cultural Anthropology

  Japanese Journal of Cultural Anthropology 82 (2), 182-201, 2017

  Japanese Society of Cultural Anthropology

Keywords

• informal sector
• street traders
• unionization
• contested space
• Tanzania

Details

• CRID: 1390001205805997824
• NII Article ID: 130006701955
• DOI: 10.14890/jjcanth.82.2_182
• ISSN: 24240516
• ISSN: 13490648
• Text Lang: ja
• Data Source:
  • JaLC
  • CiNii Articles
  • KAKEN
• Abstract License Flag: Disallowed