Introduction

(to special issue on Street Vending in the Modern World)

John C. Cross

Vassar College

Sociology & Latin American Studies

Published in the

International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy

Vol 21, #3/4, 2000.

(Special Edition edited by John C. Cross and Steve Balkin)

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Within the literature on the informal sector, street vending occupies an area of social conflict that is often overlooked by academics. Policy makers often see street vending as a problem, even as the informal sector as a whole is seen as a form of panacea for development problems related to unemployment and low income among the poor and vulnerable segments of the population such as ethnic minorities and women. The reason for this is that street vendors are often seen as occupying public space that urban planners prefer to use for other purposes. In addition, the very visibility of street vendors makes them a lightning rod for complaints from established commercial businesses that see them as unfair competitors because they don’t pay commercial rents and may avoid taxes and other regulatory codes. In an era of heightened concern for the foreign revenue that tourists can bring, street vendors are often seen as unsightly "eyesores" to be removed or to be "packaged" for the tourist (see Cutsinger). The result is that street vendors are often banned or hyper-regulated to such an extent that they have to survive outside the formal, regulated sphere in order to survive at all.

In this edition of the International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy we take a look at conflicts revolving around street vending in four areas of the world, ending with a discussion of how street vending may be promoted or at least protected through the world wide web. Each of the articles included here attempts to question one or more of the academic and/or policy arguments that tend to marginalize the importance of street vending in the modern (or postmodern) economy.

In the first article, Recep Varcin unpacks some important assumptions of street vending--that it is generally individualistic, inefficient and frequently irrational--in his research on street markets in Ankara, Turkey. He also shows that important differences exist between different street vendors in terms of their goals, and their resulting strategies. Varcin carefully shows how market traders make economic decisions in a competitive environment, and identifies three groups of vendors in terms of the goals and strategies that they pursue: profit maximizers, risk minimizers, and marginal traders. The chapter explores the significance of economies of scale, ethnicity and localism as three important "externally identifiable" characteristics around which market traders mobilize their resources and restrict the access of opportunity to "eligibles."

In the second article Stein Nesvag studies another approach to street vending—ethnic niche markets—with an analysis of African medicine vendors in Durban, South Africa. Nesvag’s analysis is further enriched because the research compares the culturally repressive apartheid period and a post-apartheid explosion of self-realization on the part of the majority African population. Still, he shows that even in the post-apartheid era street vending is seen as an eyesore and a problem, creating a complex political dynamic with a new regime whose legitimacy is based on its African roots. While he argues that street vendors formed in an important sense the beach head for African resistance to apartheid’s white dominated control of urban space, he shows that it still plays an important role in the post-apartheid era as a form of resistance to simplistic Africanization policies.

In the third article, Loran Cutsinger shows how official attempts to reshape street vending into an "appropriate" form for tourists in Barbados has had a negative effect on street vendors who rely on this sector for their livelihood. In particular, she notes that street vendors have emerged as an important part of the tourist trade in Barbados, tied into the postmodern emphasis on "authentic" tourist experiences. But at the same time the reality of street markets clashes with government concerns to present a "modern" image to the tourist market. Focusing on a market relocation scheme, Cutsinger shows how the image and the reality of street vending clash in a way that has harmed many of the most vulnerable vendors.

In the fourth article, Alfonso Morales focuses our attention on street vending in the first world—Chicago in the United States. Taking a historical perspective, Morales first shows that street vending was seen as a panacea for unemployment during the volatile progressive era, but was then mired in complaints about corruption and vice during the subsequent period. Finally, focusing on a case study of an entrepreneurial Mexican family of vendors, he highlights the importance of reconsidering the wisdom of earlier days by showing how street vending offers a series of choices that are different from the choices made by larger forms only in that they are more accessible to the poor.

Finally, in the fifth article, Alfonso Morales and Steve Balkin present a discussion of an internet website started by the authors in reaction to attacks of an historic street market in Chicago. Taking more of an "advocate" perspective rather than an academic one, they show how they broadened the website to provide information about and advocate on behalf of street vending and street markets around the world. At the same time, they discuss the successes and the problems of using the internet—with its own dynamics of formality and informality—for the purposes of helping the poor on a shoestring budget.

John C. Cross, Vassar College