Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the strategies that Bolivian market vendors employ to maintain a viable business within neo-liberal economic circumstances. Such strategies have entrenched economic differences among vendors and created a situation where vendors both compete with, and depend upon, one another.

Paper long abstract:

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Bolivia implemented neo-liberal economic policies that resulted in decreased employment opportunities, a reduction in the value of incomes, and declining support from state welfare agencies. In response, many Bolivians mobilized their own resources and sought their livelihoods through self-employment. The outcome for marketplace vendors in the highland market town of Challapata has included increased competition as more people enter the marketplace as sellers; a continuation of the low cash incomes of their largely rural customers; and, for those vendors whose spouses had paid employment, a greater reliance on their selling income to maintain their households. In this paper I explore the strategies that fresh produce vendors have employed to maintain a viable selling business within these changing economic circumstances. I examine, through the use of three case studies, how the outcomes of neo-liberal restructuring have created advantages and disadvantages for vendors. In particular, I demonstrate how vendors with the resources to do so have expanded their income earning activities while those vendors with limited access to selling resources struggle to maintain their businesses. I argue that these strategies have not only entrenched economic differentiation among marketplace vendors but have also created an environment where vendors are simultaneously competitive with, and dependent upon, one another. As a result of all these changes, vendors are focused on the affairs of their business and the maintenance of their households. In short, neither resisting nor embracing neoliberalism, vendors try to get by within the neo-liberal economic circumstances they encounter.

Paper short abstract:

In highland Bolivia, adaptation of a heritage of pre-hispanic communitarian practice has arguably shaped the development of much of civil society. It may also shape informal rural-urban food trade.

Paper long abstract:

In developing strategies of resistance, informal traders draw on pre-existing, and often pre-urban socio-cultural resources. In highland Bolivia, adaptation of a heritage of pre-hispanic communitarian practice has arguably shaped the development of peasant unions, trader guilds and urban neighbourhood governance, as well as life in the country. Communitarian practice is arguably perpetuated and adapted as a practical cultural asset which enables particular livelihood strategies and collective action in the supposedly fragmenting environments of the city. The sister cities of La Paz/El Alto and their rural hinterland provide the multi-sited field for investigation into whether such cultural adaptation also impacts the informal trade of food, and the trajectory of the rural-urban relationship. Indeed informal traders of food must not only create urban, but also rural-urban networks in order to survive. An emerging class with rural-urban livelihood strategies draws on its ´in-betweeness´ to its political-economic advantage, and is perhaps an adaptation of the rural Andean strategy of spatially discontinuous community landholding.

In contrast, perhaps, to global trends, the altereity of the social-economic organization developed by Bolivia´s indigenous people is now reflected in the explicitly post-neoliberal national ideology; the MAS government asserts its ambition to move towards a post-capitalist plural economy by drawing on the ´communitarian element´ in society. The importance placed on plurality; on the co-existence of capitalism and ´pre/post- capitalism´ in many levels of the economy is an assertion by the government that ideological conflicts about economic trajectory can be moved beyond, yet in this ambitious balancing, conflicts nevertheless play out.

Paper short abstract:

Enabled by the obfuscating potential of long-distance trade (Steiner 1994), Ghanaian market vendors respond to the alleged Chinese encroachment of urban marketplaces by constructing imaginaries of commodity value and authenticity, thus creating alternative 'luxury' markets in unusual places.

Paper long abstract:

Since the beginning of the 21st century, an increasing number of independent Chinese migrants have been flocking to Ghana's urban markets in search of investment opportunities in general trade, among other economic activities. Benefiting from trade liberalization, these migrant entrepreneurs operate in local marketplaces at reduced profit margins thus putting Ghanaian importers under existential pressure. Local entrepreneurs have responded to the new competition by finding innovative ways to interact with customers, particularly by creatively constructing their own imaginaries of quality and value and, ultimately, creating an alternative 'luxury' market amidst the informal urban marketplace. More precisely, Ghanaian importers - arguably purchasing from the same assembly lines as their Chinese counterparts - strategically choose and advertise particular Asian commodity hubs (Bangkok and Dubai instead of Guangzhou or Yiwu) which, they claim, offer higher quality Chinese commodities destined for Euro-American markets. By distancing their economic activities from their Chinese competitors this way, Ghanaian entrepreneurs construct a fictive market space that effectively secures their income generating activities against the perceived intruder. Burgeoning all over Accra's central marketplace, such boutique-fashioned businesses of pretended higher class commodities may change the face of Accra's central market in the long run. While local informal marketplaces are known to attract low-income customers, there is a chance that the recent development will re-attract the middle-class clients that have drained to Western-style supermarkets and malls over the last decade.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes how Baguio City Public Market (Philippines) traders use different resistance tactics to thwart private redevelopment of this city market. Excluded from consultation, traders negotiate alternative trading spaces to assert their citizenship rights to diversify their livelihoods.

Paper long abstract:

As Global South countries 'modernize' and 'globalize,' governments increasingly embrace neoliberal visions of development that promote controlled and sanitized urban spaces. These visions privilege constructing modern retail outlets (e.g., shopping malls, supermarkets) while discouraging or even destroying what governments view as 'traditional remnants' of entrepreneurial trade such as marketplaces and informal stalls. These political decisions and the resultant urban designs dramatically disrupt the livelihoods of those who have long supplied urbanites with essential commodities such as fresh food. Rather than witnessing the replacement of such 'traditional' supply networks by those linked to supermarkets and bulk stores, my research in Baguio City, Philippines demonstrates that traders activate a finely-tuned urban market-scape to challenge government's framing of marketplace trade as 'pre-modern' and inefficient.'

To address these competing idelogies of development, this paper analyzes the proposed redevelopment of the Baguio City Public Market - the regional wholesale and retail hub for fresh produce and industrial goods. In 1995, the city government awarded the contract to redevelop the Public Market to a private Manila-based corporation (UNIWIDE). As UNIWIDE failed to consult the permanent marketers on their redevelopment plans, traders, anticipating steep rental hikes and the loss of their premises, launched a series of civil law suits and appeals that continue to thwart the city's urban renewal efforts. I argue that Baguio City's marketers innovatively use everyday and mainstream political resistance tactics to open alternative spaces of trade and negotiation thereby successfully advocating for their rights as cultural citizens to maintain and diversify their livelihoods.

Paper short abstract:

Focusing on informal practices employed by Vietnamese small-scale traders in order to circumvent official trade regulations, this paper pursues the question of whether these may be interpreted as a strategy to construct a new "moral economy" based on the right to subsistence and the norm of reciprocity.

Paper long abstract:

In the late 1980s, when post-war relations between Vietnam and China were normalized, people from either side of the frontier started flocking to the emerging "border economic zones" in anticipation of new entrepreneurial or livelihood opportunities. Since then, a plethora of laws and decrees have been issued and implemented by the Vietnamese state in order to regulate cross border trade and market-place activities. Alongside and despite these formal regulations, small traders engage in "informal exchange relationships" with state officials in order to benefit from the modern, rules-based market economy on their own terms.

Based on ethnographic data collected during six months of fieldwork at the Lào Cai-Hekou international border gate, this paper explores the practical and conceptual dimensions of petty bribery against the background of Vietnam's transition from a centrally planned to a market oriented economy. In particular, I shall pursue the question of whether the practice of "negotiating trade regulations" with customs officers, market control agencies and tax inspectors may be seen as a strategy of small traders to construct their own localized version of a "moral economy" based on the right to subsistence and the norm of reciprocity.

Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the ambivalence of emerging online marketplaces like Etsy, VonDir, DaWanda & Co and asks if they bear the potential to diminish uncertainty in neo-liberal contexts or if they do not much rather create more uncertainties for makers and sellers involved.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses the ambivalence of recently emerging social-commerce-type online marketplaces like Etsy, VonDir, DaWanda & Co, by drawing back on data obtained through netnography as well as interviews. Attracting people who "live the handmade life" these virtual marketplaces seek to establish alternative economies and foster a direct and personal relationship between producer and consumer by providing an opportunity for handcrafters to sell their unique products to a clientele that also appreciates their effort and devotion.

The key components of selling handicrafts as a kind of non-standard work - flexibility, creativity, self-responsability - can be subsumed under what Boltanski/Chiapello (2005) call the New Spirit of Capitalism. Additionally, apparently situated outside of dominant economies, these forms of alternative entrepreneurship and markets, however, are perfectly integrated into them, as Kuni (2008) argues, for they compensate the weariness of mass-produced and -sold articles. Furthermore, by juxtaposing thousands of market stalls in the virtual world, competition has a global scope, thus making it is considerably harder to sell. Last, although anyone can become an "enterprising self" (Bröckling 2007) in these marketplaces, given the skills and creativity to make things, the majority of sellers (96% on Etsy, 85% on DaWanda) is still female.

The question therefore has to be asked if this strategy of resistance - as originally intended by the founders of Etsy and Co. - can diminish uncertainty in neo-liberal contexts or if it does not much rather create more uncertainties for makers and sellers involved.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the Vietnam state's agenda to develop cultural markets and 'cultural commodities' in the northern uplands, analysing its relevance for 'local development' in view of the actual strategies undertaken by ethnic minorities to engage with associated new cash earning activities.

Paper long abstract:

As of the mid-1990s, in the wake of Vietnam's transition to a liberalised economy 'with socialist orientation', both international and domestic cultural tourism to upland ethnic minority areas have flourished. Concurrently, the Vietnam state has begun to reframe minority culture as a resource wielding great market potential for external consumption. In the northern border upland province of Lao Cai for example, state-sanctioned cultural marketplaces, cultural villages, and cultural commodities made by ethnic minorities are now included in policies to develop the 'inefficient' upland economy - a process quickly being emulated by other neighbour provinces. Yet at the same time, state agents often consider semi-subsistence upland minorities such as Hmong and Yao to lack entrepreneurial 'know-how', and to be in need of being taught the 'correct' approach to market trade. To illustrate these conflicting processes at work, this paper focuses on case study examples of two cultural commodities produced and traded by Hmong and Yao ethnic minorities in Lao Cai province: upland artisanal alcohols and textiles. The Vietnam state's promotion of specific aspects of tourism in a particular format, and the diverse responses to such initiatives by minority traders, reveals how such official schemes at times mesh, while at others clash, with upland subsistence needs, customary practice, and with uplanders successfully realising new economic opportunities. Moreover, economic liberalisation has opened up important trade avenues for uplanders that modify, or exist outside of, the official approach envisaged by the state, and are either entirely overlooked or else marginalised by the state's development agenda in practice.