Faculty Sabbatical Talk: Dr. B. Lynne Milgram

Local farmer with product
Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - 7:00pm

The Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences & School of Interdisciplinary Studies is pleased to present Dr. B. Lynne Milgram’s faculty sabbatical talk: 

"From Market to Market: (Re)Fashioning Spheres of "Extralegality" and "Informality" in Entrepreneurial Trade in the Philippines.”

Global South governments have responded to urban growth by embracing a development agenda that favours “modern” constructions (malls, supermarkets) while discouraging what they view as “informal” remnants of trade (marketplaces, street vending, crafts). In Baguio, northern Philippines and in Kalibo, central Philippines, this top-down approach, rather than causing small-scale vendors to lose out to new market players, means that public marketers, street vendors, as well as city officials each preserve their respective interests by fashioning pastiches of practice that materialize urban spheres of “formal/informal’ and “legal/illegal” permissiveness.

Using three Philippine case studies of edgy trade practices (street vending, public market trade, crafts), I argue that merchants combine mainstream “advocacy” and informal “everyday” politics to protest government privatization initiatives. In Baguio, while awaiting decisions on their lawsuits challenging the city’s modernization policies, street vendors and public market traders extend product displays into public spaces and sell prohibited goods to create “grey spaces” of formal/informal and “extralegal” practice. Frustrated that marketers’ court actions have successfully delayed municipal policies, officials have formalized and legalized some of marketers’ infractions thereby highlighting government’s complicity in using informality and extralegality as urban organizing logics when these strategies are to their advantage. In Kalibo, craft entrepreneurs have mitigated government constraints by fashioning transnational markets for their specialized crafts (household décor products). Across class sectors then, Philippine market players operationalize “informality” and “extralegality” as interdependent strategies to materialize work spheres that can consolidate power and control more on their own terms.

Venue & Address: 
100 McCaul Street, room 667
Event Information