Paper short abstract:

This paper draws upon ongoing ethnographic fieldwork in informal urban settlements in Fiji to analyse how theoretical concepts such as value, labour and commodification at once inform and are articulated through quotidian economic practice.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I trace the human economy of informal urban settlements in Fiji. Drawing upon ongoing ethnographic fieldwork in the peri-urban edge-lands outside Fiji's largest commercial centres my discussion analyzes the everyday economic strategies squatters employ in order to make a living and survive on the fringe of the market economy. I am particularly interested in how local understandings of key theoretical concepts such as value, labour and commodification at once inform and are articulated through various forms of informal economic activities - from commodity trade, gambling and cash crops to usury, hawking and hustling - in the heterogeneous, rapidly changing, and unstable context of squatter settlements. More broadly I use this particular study to reflect on how research data on the quotidian economic practice of those who are most highly motivated to effect change can be operationalized politically and inform social justice discourses about urban poverty in Fiji and beyond.