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The Grey Zones of Illegality and Informality: Creativity, Cunning and Innovation

Wed, September 4, 2:45 to 4:15pm, Sheraton New Orleans Hotel, Floor: Four, Evergreen

Abstract

Usually considered as ‘backyards’, the grey zones, the borderlands and peripheries in the global south are a truly breeding grounds for innovation and invention; very often captivating practices emerge in these chaotic and dim zones. In such geographies’ actors deploy solutions to problems, often driven by local forms of cunning and slyness. What matters in such locales is the creative, sly combinations of materials and designs. Despite the many instances, styles and places in which innovation and creativity in these grey zones take shape, and the different uses, subsistence, resistances or antagonisms, there are few serious attempts to analyse them.

Research in STS and beyond has begun exploring the development of technologies and practices in those areas. This panel will seek to highlight the theoretical and topical commonalities as well as disagreements and debates that make the study of innovation in such grey, illegal or dim areas such a vibrant topic, especially in the global south. The panel will explore issues such as: what kind of knowledge, designs, techniques and technologies pass through these grey areas? How are they connected, exchanged and taught? How does the informal or illegal nature influence for innovating? What type of cunning, recursions or tricks are required? How to overcome malevolent, disdained or tropical vision of those technologies and forms of knowledge? Which social actors and epistemic cultures have been playing the leading role in the development, implementation and regulation of the technologies?

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