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- Convenors:
-
Lale Yalcin-Heckmann
(Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology and University of Pardubice)
Detelina Tocheva (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)
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- Discussant:
-
Sophie Chevalier
(University of Picardie Jules Verne)
- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- Aula Magna-Spelbomskan
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 15 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Stockholm
Short Abstract:
Cities have dense, rapidly changing economies. Urban economies with different kinds of firms, networks and institutions dominate the world economy. We invite papers which highlight the dynamic and variegated character of the relationship between staying and settling, and urban economies.
Long Abstract:
Contemporary cities are economically dense and rapidly changing locations. Urban economies generally dominate the world economy. We wish to highlight the dynamic and highly variegated character of the relation between, on the one side, staying and settling, and, on the other side, contemporary urban economic life.
This panel invites ethnographically informed, theoretically embedded and innovative contributions on (but not only) small, middle-sized and larger businesses, including family enterprises, immigrant entrepreneurs, public, private and informal employment, state and private welfare provisions for migrants and "autochthonous" inhabitants, grassroots economic support systems and networks. All these can provide motivations and means for leading 'good lives', for staying, settling or leaving, hence building up, sustaining, expanding, or alternatively, leading to the decline of urban economies. Are there, for instance, intrinsic factors and theoretical models for linking the viability of medium-sized cities to the viability (or dominance) of medium-sized firms?
We invite participants to rethink theoretically processes of resilience and transformation of urban economies through the lens of staying and settling. In doing so, we wish to address some core questions in economic anthropology, such as: How do different structures and modes of economic integration (Karl Polanyi), as for example market and redistribution, combine with, or contradict each other, and influence processes of staying, settling, or moving in different sized urban centres? Do instances of reciprocal gifting, unreciprocated support, sharing, and sociability in general still shape urban economies, as has been argued by Jenny White (1994) for the case of capitalist and non-capitalist contexts?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 15 August, 2018, -Paper short abstract:
This paper explores how distinct practices of exchange underlie different experiences of staying and settling in two urban economies in the Papua New Guinea highlands.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores how different principles of exchange underlie contrasting experiences of settling, staying, and moving about, in two urban economies in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. Both these urban economies, Mount Hagen and Goroka, are shaped by distinct practices of reciprocal gifting and sharing. It would be inadequate, however, to thus characterize them broadly as non-capitalist. Through exemplifying the conduct of business and grassroots economic support systems dominant in these respective urban economies, the paper presents an argument for paying attention to how different local values surrounding exchange and appropriate relating are reflected in urban economies. We suggest looking beyond a dichotomous understanding of capitalist and non-capitalist contexts, for understanding how market and redistribution become integrated.
The area of Mount Hagen became widely known to anthropologists through the ceremonial exchange system of moka (A. Strathern 1971). Simply put, moka consists of reciprocal exchange in which wealth is disbursed and later recalled with an increment. The principle underlying moka, arguably, may be compared to an investment with interest. While its ceremonial aspects may have increasingly changed over the last decades, its underlying principle continues to inform Mount Hagen's urban economy and life, affording it a 'business-minded' reputation. The area of Goroka, in contrast, has been characterized as guided by values of equivalence, equality, and parity in exchange and relations (Read 1959). In contemporary Goroka, this manifests in people's perceived pressure to level differences of wealth through redistribution. These differences have implications for settling, staying, and moving about.
Paper short abstract:
This paper investigates reasons, resources and challenges for setting up a small business in Pathein, Myanmar. Through case studies it addresses socio-economic factors in the changing urban landscape as well as moral aspects and value-related ideas such as autonomy that business owners refer to.
Paper long abstract:
This paper investigates reasons, resources and challenges for setting up a small business in Pathein, Myanmar. It is based on a year of ethnographic research in 2015-2016. With access to stable and attractive employment options severely limited, many people became self-employed and pursue their own business ventures in the middle-sized town of Pathein in Myanmar. These people have chosen to stay in Pathein, rather than seeking work elsewhere, as many others do. This paper discusses why people decided to become business owners and how they realized this plan by comparing different examples. Some people directly started as business owners, others have traded secure and respected public sector employment for setting up their own small business, and they often frame this decision in moral terms. In many cases, owning a business is linked to a certain desire for autonomy. However, business owners face a range of socio-economic constraints. Acquiring the necessary capital to start a business through one's own effort is not easy these days, compared to the early period of the transformation (the decade following 1990). Those who started businesses only recently either inherited the business or saved money through working abroad for some years. To outline socio-economic conditions more in-depth, I will take into account how the economic landscape of the town has been shaped throughout the country's history, and how it remains ethnically divided in terms of professions, sectors, and locations.
Paper short abstract:
Kampala, Uganda is a rapidly growing and stratifying urban city. A majority of individuals migrate from rural areas and are employed in the urban informal economy. Support networks, known as bar groups, provide a buffer against economic scarcity and fragility that punctuates life at the margins.
Paper long abstract:
Contemporary Kampala, Uganda is a burgeoning city with a high level of economic inequality. Individuals migrate from rural areas to urban Kampala to seek better job opportunities. A majority end up working in the informal economy. At the same time, Ugandan policy has led to a crack-down on the informal economy in an attempt to regulate the sector. This has created high barriers to job entry, especially in marginalized communities. This paper examines the interplay of political and economic factors and the resulting bar groups that arise as a form of economic support networks to buffer against policy-level stress.
This research focuses on one female sex work community, where a majority of resident men are no longer able to find stable employment (Schmidt-Sane, 2018). In this precarious environment, men form economic support networks locally termed "bar groups" to share resources, information, and social support. These bar groups are a local form of resilience. Concomitantly, they facilitate vulnerability to health risks such as increased drinking, drug use, and unsafe sex. In a local informal economy driven by female sex work, men are reliant on bar groups. Similar to work by Bourgois (2002), this research finds that bar groups are a paradoxical example of resilience and vulnerability, depending on context. It is in this context that men are redefining rational individual action, furthering our anthropological conceptualization of vulnerability and resilience.
Paper short abstract:
Drawing on ethnographic experiences, this paper aims contributing to the better understanding of the question why some people stay by looking at how sociality and durable social relations continued to prevail and define labour in retail trade in postsocialist urban context.
Paper long abstract:
Retail trade in Western capitalist context is often depicted as alienated and impersonal in comparison to the embedded commercial relationships of pre-capitalist societies. By going beyond this stark conceptual separation and exploring the ways in which durable social relations continued to prevail and define labour in retail trade in postsocialist urban context, I will show that the endurance of sociality is crucial for understanding why some people stay. The paper draws on the rich anthropological literature on gift relations and follows those authors who argue that reciprocity and gift-giving prevails in all spheres of life, shaping all social interaction, including labour relations as well (see White 1994; Carrier 1995; Adloff 2006). Recently the popular concept of 'flexible capitalism' has been re-conceptualised in a similar vein, showing that prevailing work regimes are underpinned by proliferating sociality and social exchanges (Kjaerulff 2015). Since the nationalization of tobacco retail trade in 2012, tobacco products have been only sold in specialized, government franchised cigar stores, so-called "National Tobacco Shops" in Hungary. This resulted in the proliferation of small-sized - often family owned - tobacco shops. Drawing on my ethnographic research conducted in such retail shops in the city of Szeged (Hungary), I will show how practices of non-commodified social exchanges based on reciprocity and mutual obligations define both horizontal and vertical labour relations as well as the transactions between shopkeepers and customers in retail shops. By doing that, I will also argue that these shops function as social institutions in economically deprived urban neighbourhoods.
Paper short abstract:
The market of the Eloy Salmón is the most important and reliable market of the city of La Paz, in which all kinds of electronic devices are offered and has become a lever of the economic growth of the city.
Paper long abstract:
The Eloy Salmón market is a space where all kinds of electronic devices are offered. Its actors, mostly retail traders, weave economic and social relationships with other traders to make this market the most important and reliable in the city. The merchants of Eloy Salmón are the product of a series of processes of exclusion and marginalization but through their institutions and cultural practices, family networks and the appropriation of spaces have reached high levels of purchasing power, claiming their citizenship and maintaining relations with global capital. The city of La Paz has had, thanks to these merchants, the possibility of developing a domestic market, offering better job opportunities and acting as a resistance to the primary exporting economy in which Bolivia finds itself. For this research I asked the following questions: how is the process of movement of goods?, how have they managed to develop this market?, what impact does it have on the city of La Paz? Questions that I will try to answer.