Competing for Jurisdiction: The Struggle for Practical Legitimation and the Persistence of Informal Economic Institutions

• In Event: 3151 - Theory Section Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 8. Theoretical Approaches to Global Change and Challenges – B

Abstract

What sustains informal economic practices amidst shifting governance structures? In Delhi,government initiatives to modernize garbage systems around 2009 prioritized trucks and incinerators, clashing with an existing informal collection and recycling system. I ask: How have Delhi’s informal collectors managed to continue working despite the threat posed by the municipality’s competing service? Drawing on data collected over 20 months of ethnographic
fieldwork alongside Delhi’s informal garbage collectors, including over 100 interviews, this talk focuses on how informal collectors were able to continue providing services to a majority of households in the neighborhoods they serve. I show that they successfully cultivated the patronage of middle-class residents by conforming to a diminutive status that confirmed residents’ higher position. These status relations required that collectors make themselves available for additional services like sweeping, odd repair jobs, and maintaining caste-based pollution boundaries. By showing how informal collectors relied on these relations to maintain jurisdiction over trash
collection in Delhi, I illustrate a pathway through which urban informality has proven so durable globally.

Author

• Dana Kornberg, University of Michigan