Menu Expand
Street Vending in the Neoliberal City

Street Vending in the Neoliberal City

Kristina Graaff | Noa Ha

(2015)

Additional Information

Book Details

Abstract

Examining street vending as a global, urban, and informalized practice found both in the Global North and Global South, this volume presents contributions from international scholars working in cities as diverse as Berlin, Dhaka, New York City, Los Angeles, Calcutta, Rio de Janeiro, and Mexico City. The aim of this global approach is to repudiate the assumption that street vending is usually carried out in the Southern hemisphere and to reveal how it also represents an essential—and constantly growing—economic practice in urban centers of the Global North. Although street vending activities vary due to local specificities, this anthology illustrates how these urban practices can also reveal global ties and developments.


Kristina Graaff is Assistant Professor of American Studies at Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany.


Noa Ha is Researcher at the Center for Metropolitan Studies, Technical University of Berlin.


“The relevance and uniqueness of Graff and Ha’s edited volume makes it a must read for anyone interested in the complex intersections of social dimensions and phenomena in the study of cities from a global perspective.” • Urbanities. Journal of Urban Ethnography

Street Vending in the Neoliberal City does a good job of conveying the diversity of street vending forms, while also emphasizing their many common qualities and obstacles.  One of the most original features of the collection is its emphasis on the United States, whereas ethnographies of street vending often focus on the ‘Third World.’… Street vending may be marginalized by many officials and elites, but it is hardly marginal, and no analysis of modern economics and capitalism would be complete without considering it.” • Anthropology Review Database

“Overall, this is an excellent book. The collection of essays the editors have brought together is quite impressive . . . The quality is consistently high, and the originality and richness of the writing is very compelling.” • Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria, Brandeis University


Table of Contents

Section Title Page Action Price
Contents 5
Figures 7
Introduction — Street Vending in the Neoliberal City: A Global Perspective on the Practices and Policies of a Marginalized Economy 9
Part I — Responding to Urban and Global Neoliberal Policies 25
Chapter 1 — Flexible Families: Latina/o Food Vending in Brooklyn, New York 27
Chapter 2 — Street Vending and the Politics of Space in New York City 51
Chapter 3 — Creative Resistance: The Case of Mexico City's Street Artisans and Vendors 67
Part II — Street Vending and Ethnicity 87
Chapter 4 — Metropolitan Informality and Racialization: Street Vending in Berlin's Historical Center 89
Chapter 5 — Selling Memory and Nostalgia in the Barrio: Mexican and Central American Women (Re)Create Street Vending Spaces in Los Angeles 109
Chapter 6 — Ethnic Contestations over African American Fiction: The Street Vending of Street Literature in New York City 125
Part III — The Spatial Mobility of Urban Street Vending 145
Chapter 7 — The Urbanism of Los Angeles Street Vending 147
Chapter 8 — Selling in Insecurity, Living with Violence: Eviction Drives against Street Vendors in Dhaka and the Informal Politics of Exploitation 172
Chapter 9 — The Street Vendors Act and Pedestrianism in India: A Reading of the Archival Politics of the Calcutta Hawker Sangram Committee 199
Part IV — Historical Accounts of Street Vending 225
Chapter 10 — Street Vending, Political Activism, and Community Building in African American History: The Case of Harlem 227
Chapter 11 — The Roots of Street Commerce Regulation in the Urban Slave Society of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 241
Index 258