Informal Market Worlds – Reader

THE ARCHITECTURE OF ECONOMIC PRESSURE

Informal markets arise on the fault lines inscribed by global alliances of money and power: wars and humanitarian crises, national and infrastructural borders, the worldwide trade in waste and the marginal spaces of urban transformation. They act as globalization’s safety valve while also providing livelihoods for millions of people trading in the streets of cities around the world.

This book tracks the powers, currents and actors driving informal trade. It documents the growing influence informal economies are having on human co-existence on a planetary scale. Informal markets may have turned into key urban economic frontiers, but can they also produce positive social and political change?

Exploring the conflicted realities of informal market worlds, this reader brings together texts on urban informality, global struggle and design activism by eminent scholars and practitioners, including TEDDY CRUZ, ALEJANDRO ECHEVERRI, KEITH HART, ANANYA ROY, SASKIA SASSEN, RICHARD SENNETT, ABDOUMALIQ SIMONE, GAYATRI CHAKRAVORTY SPIVAK, JEAN-PHILIPPE VASSAL and many others.

CONTENTS (selected chapters available as PDF)

7 Introduction / Peter Mörtenböck, Helge Mooshammer, Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman

PART I OTHER MARKETS
17 Other Markets: Sites and Processes of Economic Pressure / Helge Mooshammer
33 How the Informal Economy took over the World / Keith Hart
45 Shrinking Economies, Growing Expulsions / Saskia Sassen
55 Bottom Billion Capitalism: How Informality Became a Global Market / Ananya Roy
69 EcoDomics: Life Beyond the Neoliberal Apocalypse / Ignacio Valero
97 Informal Markets / Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

PART II GLOBAL INFORMALITY
105 Global Informality: Bottom-up Trade and Transnational Realignments / Peter Mörtenböck
119 Fields of Inclusion: Notes on Traditional Markets in Jakarta / AbdouMaliq Simone and Rika Febriyani
135 National Market, Bangalore / Lawrence Liang
149 Informal China: A History of Control & Out-of-Control / Jiang Jun
161 From Informality to Parametricism and Back Again / Vyjayanthi Rao and Vineet Diwadkar
185 Speculative Futures: Social Practice, Cognitive Capitalism and/or the Triumph of Capital / Matias Viegener

PART III CHANGING PRACTICES
207 Changing Practices: Engaging Informal Public Demands / Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman
229 A Virtual Roundtable: The Informal Public Demands a New Conversation / Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman in conversation with Alejandro Echeverri and Jean-Philippe Vassal Responses by atelier d’architecture autogérée [Constantin Petcou and Doina Petrescu], Marty Chen, Mauricio Corbalan, Emiliano Gandolfi, Hou Hanru, MAP Office [Laurent Gutierrez and Valérie Portefaix], Rahul Mehrotra, Alejandro Meitin, William Morrish, Henry Murraín, Robert Neuwirth, Kyong Park, Alessandro Petti, Marjetica Potrč, Lorenzo Romito, Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph, Saskia Sassen, Richard Sennett, STEALTH.ultd [Ana Džokić and Marc Neelen] and Jeanne van Heeswijk