Why Do Informal Workers Organize?

Chapter 1 introduces the puzzle of organized street vendors with the stories of two street vendors: Rosa, the founding leader of a champagne ladies’ union in La Paz, and Renato, who works as an unorganized electronics vendor in São Paulo. The chapter then situates the puzzle within existing research on collective action, civil society, informal work, and state capacity. According to most scholars, informal workers do not organize, which makes Rosa’s union and its affiliation with a national street vendor confederation puzzling. The chapter outlines an explanation for why informal workers organize, assesses alternative explanations around grassroots activism and clientelism, and presents the research design for the book. Specifically, it finds that officials encourage informal workers to organize self-regulating groups. The chapter argues that this is most likely to happen where officials have governance goals and career ambitions but face capacity constraints and where informal workers have the know-how to organize self-regulating groups.

Biopolitics, citizenship, and inequalities in HIV assemblages

Di Feliciantonio and Brown offer an important overview of key research areas for the geographies of PrEP, TasP, and undetectabitily, and they consider what matters for the lives of gay and bisexual men. I offer two areas of further consideration. Firstly, I suggest that rather than setting the biopolitical critiques of PrEP and TasP as at odds with grassroots activism, sexual pleasure, and subjectivities, that these particular forms of biosexual activism are indeed central to subject formation and sexual practices and are constitutive of the other within HIV assemblages. Secondly, I highlight the need to consider inequalities more directly both within the context of national borders in relation to jurisdictional health policy, implementation, and access, and within gay communities themselves in relation to intersectional and embodied identities.

Asserting Control Over [A]Historical Consciousness: How the Settler State Perpetuates Indigenous Homelessness

The following historiographical analysis briefly outlines the legacy of Indigenous encampments on the Aboriginal Burial Ground in Rossdale Flats in what is colonially known as Edmonton, AB. Specifically, the following analysis documents the grassroots activism of prayer camp pekiwewin in the final months of 2020. Beginning with a brief overview of the encampment site, this research analysis critiques the ongoing colonialism in urban settler cities which regulate how peoples can operate in relation with the land. The methodologies of the state explored herein pertain to the function of public history, ongoing settler colonial oppression, and the criminalization of homelessness as factors that reproduce inequalities. Keywords: settler colonial, public history, homelessness, Indigenous Peoples, urban cities

Whose Safety is the Priority?

Police and policing have tacitly, and at times explicitly, been normalized as aspects of library service in the U.S. As American forms of policing are exported at an international scale, this has international implications. Justification for embedded policing inside library walls has turned upon librarian and library staff conceptions of safety. This essay posits that a lack of critical engagement with the topics of policing and safety reflects the deficit of substantive discourse around antiracist pedagogy within library and information science (LIS) education and practice. The paper pairs critical research on safety and criminalization with patrons’ comments on policing and grassroots activism by LIS professionals to rethink safety as something shared between librarians, staff, patrons, and potential patrons (the community). Ongoing, organized campaigns around policing and security within libraries are documented so that their efforts, trials, and successes will engender further research and set a marked precedent of how LIS education and professions can reevaluate the role of policing and police in library settings everywhere.

Globalization from above and below: Rejecting superficial multiculturalism and igniting anti-Korean sentiment in Japan

Nike Japan’s distribution of a commercial included a message of superficial multiculturalism presented through the narratives of three Japanese girls – ethnic Japanese, “hafu,” and zainichi – who overcome bullying and discrimination through their shared love of football (soccer). The ad demonstrated a glocalized production to fit with the “You Can’t Stop Us” global ad campaign of Nike, a transnational shoe and athletic apparel company. Thus, the ad reflects globalization from above. In response, some Japanese viewers expressed their anger at the ad to voice their grassroots resistance, reflecting globalization from below. The resistance was not against Nike for its transnational exploitation but for its alleged hypocrisy. Most substantially, the resistance was directed against generalized Koreans. Thus, the article argues that globalization from below is not necessarily, or perhaps not even usually counter-hegemonic or anti-transnational capitalism. Instead, grassroots activism takes advantage of moments to process and produce existing ideological meanings.

Retrofitting an emergency approach to the climate crisis: A study of two climate emergency declarations in Aotearoa New Zealand

In the last year, hundreds of climate emergency declarations have been made by local and national governments around the world. Instigated through grassroots activism, these declarations have become a focus of aspirations for radical climate action. However, concerns have also raised been about the desirability of emergency declarations in responding to the climate crisis, including at a local scale. In this paper we consider the enactment of emergency declarations by two local government authorities in Aotearoa New Zealand that have recent experience with multiple crises. Drawing on in-depth interviews with activists, councillors and officials, our findings show that adopting the ‘international language’ of climate emergency can be a source of hope but also tension. In particular, we highlight the struggle of local practitioners to overlay an emergency approach, something that is already contested in response to sudden onset disasters, with the scale, complexity and temporality of climate change. Our analysis suggests that retrofitting an emergency approach to the climate crisis at the local scale has the potential to reproduce status quo politics, and calls for a greater understanding of the diversity of approaches to emergency in climate politics.

Creating the New System

This chapter explores whether a new labor system could ever become law and overcome the massive political hurdles standing in the way. The path to victory is quite narrow. There needs to be sufficient grassroots activism to push labor issues to the top of the agenda, a strong majority of politicians willing to vote for pro-union policy, champions to drive the policy forward, and a favorable intellectual climate. As difficult as these are to achieve, they are possible if favorable trends continue and rise in intensity. The public must increasingly and more forcefully demand change, and the political and intellectual climate must continue shifting in favor of labor modernization. The chapter concludes by echoing the theme of the book — that a new labor system with broad-based bargaining and encouragement for union membership would help address the fundamental economic and political challenges that the United States faces. The more people recognize this, the better the chances for creating a new labor system.

Usurpers of Technology: Train Robbery and Theft in Egypt, 1876–1904

This article examines banditry, embezzlement, and other insider crimes along Egyptian railway lines during a period when British officials exerted centralized control over the Egyptian railway and financial austerity had a negative impact on the rail sector. By exploring the motives and tactics of railway crimes, I posit that criminals, by making claims on and use of the technology outside the purview of state regulations, expressed their heterogeneous desires to redistribute social wealth, repurpose the technological promise of modern railways, and confound intentions of colonial governance. Using new archival materials, this article utilizes a bottom-up approach to examine grassroots activism, everyday knowledge, informal networks, and the social mores and norms that criminals harnessed to discern infrastructural vulnerabilities and elude surveillance from the colonial state. Ultimately, I contend that criminal acts uncovered social crises otherwise hidden under the shadow of the exterior prosperity and stability of late 19th-century Egypt.

Introduction

This chapter focuses on ideology, different ideological perspectives, our relationship with them, and how we may change that for the better. It particularly discusses political ideologies. These are two words that for many people may be more likely to feel alien and difficult than comfortable and familiar. The chapter aims to make connections between two ideas that seem to have increasing significance for us all: participation and ideology. While they seem to be closely interrelated and to have major implications for each other, so far efforts to explore the relationship of the two seem to have been limited. The chapter starts from the premise that if the aim is to advance an ideological perspective which promotes an empowering society and reflects everyone's rights and needs, then this is more likely to be achieved if it is done in a participatory way. Ultimately, the chapter distinguishes right-wing populism and grassroots activism, which both challenge conventional politics and highlight their limitations and disconnect from the grassroots.

Digital Failures in Abolitionist Ethnography

In an era when grassroots activism is defined by the use of social media, the democratic potentials of the Internet are constantly confronted by a shifting set of practical and political obstacles. Organizations seeking to abolish violent policing, for example, use social media to mobilize widespread support, but can fail to solidify lasting influence within government institutions. Similarly, twenty-first-century ethnographers have gained the ability to interact with grassroots organizations over social media, but often fail to gain insight into a movement's internal politics or day-to-day struggles. This article focuses on the challenges of anti-violence activists in Brazilian favelas following the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics. The author explores how ethnographers can create a sense of continuity out of digital failure.