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A Dialectical Play: State Power and Counter-Power in
Amsterdam
ǯs Dappermarkt
Student: Karthik Harinath Student Number: 11217928
E-mail: karthikharinath@hotmail.com Date of Submission: 26 June 2017
Course: MSc Urban and Regional Planning
Supervisor: Federico Savini Second Reader: Anna Nikolaeva School: University of Amsterdam
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Abstract
The notions of formality and informality have for long been used in the planning discourse to characterise the conflictual relationship between state authorities and traders in street markets. However, the continued use of this dichotomy has led to a poor understanding of both informality and the state behind the formal structures. In this essay, I propose an alternative conceptualisation in the form of state power and counter-power . This, I argue, achieves three things. Firstly, by characterising the transgressions of traders as counter-power , it allows us to understand the state itself as a site of power. Next, the state is rescued from its current understanding of being an entity solely focused on doing away with informality. Finally, it enables us to characterise the relationship between the state and its traders as one that is neither negotiable nor transactional in nature. Instead, I contend, it is one that is driven by the notion of play . The essay concludes by questioning whether the state follows a logic of formalisation and placing the process of policy-making under the spotlight. Research was conducted in Amsterdam s Dappermarkt.
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Acknowledgements
Like any theses before and all theses that will follow, this thesis has not been the product of an individual. I owe immense gratitude to my thesis supervisor, Federico Savini, without whose patience and measured guidance this thesis would have been wasted as an unstructured idea within my head. Thanks are also due to my second reader Anna Nikolaeva.
Apart from a lovely bunch of classmates with whom I ve had many discussions, thanks are due to Tarun Kattumana, Kartikeya Jain, and Narayanan Gopalakrishnan, for engaging with me critically on multiple occasions despite their own work.
I reserve my deepest and most sincere thanks to my family that has supported me despite being separated by several continents. My father s absence is most felt in these tough times, but I recall his life hacks and like a bottomless well, he keeps providing me with confidence.
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Table of Contents
Introduction
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I The Dialectics of a Powerplay
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The Formal-Informal Dialectic
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ǮPlayǯing the Game
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What is the
Ǯstateǯ in formality?
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II Research Methods
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The Study
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III Street Markets in Amsterdam: From Fame to Crisis
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Dappermarkt: A Story in Itself
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IV It
’s all about cents and centimeters
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Arbitrariness, the New Norm
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Non-Cooperative Gemeente
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Taxing Procedures
_______________________________________________________41
V Conclusion
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Reflections
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For centuries, cities across Europe have sought pride in their street markets. Public markets have, of course, come a long way from the time Heraclitus expounded his revolutionary philosophy in the markets of Ephesus. Close to a millennium later, the Buroughs Market in London came into existence, predating the Magna Carta by almost two centuries. The Marché d Aligre in the heart of Paris was the site of the Barricades during the French Revolution and even survived the short-lived Paris Commune. Starting out as an impromptu gathering of people who had something to sell and people who had something to buy, street markets soon became a periodical and spatialized occasion that cities started coalescing around.1 It was during the time when street markets went from being a phenomenon that served necessity to one that served curiousity as well did the state, in its many forms over time, enter the picture. From the monarchs of Medieval Europe who had to collect taxes to fund faraway wars, to the elected heads of state in Modern Europe who needed to control the quality of food available to the burghers, state involvement in the running and everyday operation of markets have, inevitably, changed them.
The lanes of simple commerce today are not alien to the kind of conflicts that come with the machinations of state power. Cities frame rules and regulations that, to varying degrees, control how traders in these markets can operate, sometimes even going to the extent of dictating what and how they can sell.2 The fact that these laws have changed over time, while the fundamental principle of a street market has not, tells us that traders have not taken too kindly to the state s immersion in controlling the means of their livelihood. This then, has resulted in a seemingly never-ending cycle. Laws that attempt to exercise state authority over a market come to be questioned, in more ways than one, by the traders. In response, laws are tweaked to re-emphasise governmental power, eliciting more responses, and so on. The enforcement of these laws and the supervision of the traders has historically been handed over to an authority figure dedicated to the markets. For the traders, she represents the face of the power. For the city, she is more than an enforcer of laws, acting at times as the scapegoat for any failures.
The to-and-fro movement between the city on the one hand and the traders in its street markets on the other hand, with the figure of the market supervisor at its centre, forms the core of this project. At the crux of this movement is the notion of power. Power as has been theorised upon over several decades has been seen as belonging to the state. A response from the citizen (or the trader for the purposes of this project) is seen as a contestation of this power. However, by terming the traders reactions as a contestation, an important aspect of this equation is overlooked,
1
For the purposes of this project, I follow Morales (2011), a d defi e a a ketpla e as o e that e hi its fi e characteristics, viz., buyers, sellers, merchandise, a place, and periodicity.
2
S ith , ites o the issues that the Co po atio of Lo do i egulated. These i luded, A i al welfare, freemen and foreigners, hawkers, location of retailers, market days and hours, market (mal)practices, middlemen, noise, smell, waste, quality, retail prices, types of p odu e, eights & easu es. The regulations in Amsterdam are expanded upon in Chapter II. Smith, Colin Stephen. "The Market Place and the Market's Place in London, c. 1660-1840". PhD. Diss. University of London, 1999.
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namely its ability to alter state power itself. In other words, power is not the sole domain of the state. For, by being able to force the city to amend its laws constantly, do the traders not display characteristics of power? Do the traders not conduct the conduct of the state by resisting, through various actions, the laws that are meant to conduct them in a particular way? Does this not make the state itself a site of power? I begin the next chapter by arguing against portraying the relationship between the city and its street vendors in a dichotomous manner. Doing so opens up the relationship to a different understanding than is currently prevalent. In seeing this relationship as a one that is dialectical rather than transactional or based on negotiations , I argue, we are able to look beyond the actions that trigger particular laws, and vice-versa, and into the intentions behind these actions and the laws. It could be argued that by undertaking this line of argument, one risks side-lining the figure of the market supervisor. However, the market supervisor is more than a simple tool for law enforcement. By engrossing herself in the everydayness of the market, she enters the grey area of being both a representative of the city s powers over the vendors and simultaneously being the social face of the counter-power of the traders. Indeed the idea of a counter-power is not new. In the way I employ the term, I aim to take it beyond a prevalent understanding that sees the notion as a mode of resistance and challenge to state power. Counter-power, I will argue, has the same capacities of disciplining and conducting as state power does, except that its source is different. This allows us to understand power as, firstly, not being the sole property of the state, and secondly, framing the relationship as one that is focused on power allows us to see it as an endless relationship.
In the second chapter, a brief history of street-markets and their governance in the city of Amsterdam is provided alongside a few preliminary observations from the Dappermarkt. Located to the East of the historic city centre, the Dappermarkt s story begins at the turn of the 20th century. Seeing out both World Wars and incredible changes to the city of Amsterdam, the Dappermarkt today stands as one of the arenas in which the above-mentioned movement is played out to its fullest. Over a short period of four weeks between May and June 2017, several observations were made that question a typically dichotomous understanding of the complex relationship between a city and its street vendors. These observations, based on three specific examples are detailed in the penultimate chapter. In the concluding chapter, I present a call for a fresh understanding of policy making and their enforcement. Prior to pointing to certain limitations of this project, further lines of inquiry that this project opens up are highlighted.
I
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Marketplaces have been a crucial part of most European cities for centuries, so much so that several towns have developed with the public market as its centre. Following Braudel s (1979) emphasis on the importance of marketplaces in the development of early modern Europe, they have come to be described both as a wicked problem (Horst and Webber 1973) and as a wicked opportunity (Morales 2010). However, be it in the developing or the developed economies, marketeers, traders and vendors who ply their wares in public spaces such as a marketplace have for long formed contested sites of interaction and conflict.3 Within the planning discourse, this conflict has been explored in multiple directions, with the formal-informal dichotomy being a prominent heuristic.4 The dichotomous conceptualisation was opened up as an area of inquiry by Hart (1970) and Breman (1976) within labour economics, and later adopted as a means to study the informal aspects of societies of the Global South. It has proven to be a useful tool to not only explore state-citizen relationships, it has also informed notions of the state vis-à-vis the government . However, as an analytical tool, the concept holds importance in analysing developed economies as well. In that vein, this thesis will look to study the exchanges between formal forces and informal actors in Amsterdam s marketplaces, with an aim to outline the everyday impact of the play between formal laws and informal agents. At a theoretical level, two issues seem to plague this dichotomy. Firstly, there has been no consensus over the definition of the term informal . The ubiquitous nature of informal practices and agents of informality has forced scholars to look at informality simply as anything that is not formal. The broad usage of the term, as Guha-Khasnobis et al. (2006, 3) note, is simply a placeholder that helps to … o ju e up a mental picture of whatever the user has in mind at that particular time. With planning inheriting without much question the dichotomous relationship between informality and formality first advocated by scholars of labour economics, informality is often seen as unregulated , uncontrolled , messy , and inefficient in comparison to formality which is ordered , regulated , and efficient Porter (2011, 116). Despite its weak definition, Porter argues that this multi-dimensional concept is not just a major challenge facing cities and urban dwellers of today, it is one of the strongest challenges to both well established and contemporary planning practices. Studies of informality have also largely travelled between the growing megacities of the Global South. As Roy and AlSayyad (2004) observe in their introduction, informality as a concept in planning had its initial uses in analysing housing and land markets in Latin America. Marking the illegal subdivision of agricultural land as one of the major contributors to informal urban development in much of the Third World , the authors also point to how the increased levels of
3
See (Agnew 1986); (Clark 1988); (Cross 1988); and (Picavet 1989).
4 Based o Sa a Ah ed s Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, and Others, Doan (2015) in her edited
volume explores the idea of making contested sites such as markets more inclusive. Terming marketplaces as egle ted pu li spa es, Watso (2009) explores the inherent sociality of such sites and contrasts it to the often forced sociality of shopping malls.
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liberalization in the Global South has led to a commodification of informal housing and land markets (Ibid., 4-6).
The insight that informality goes beyond these two sectors, possibly implying a logic that structures the very fabric of urban life (Ibid., 6), has been picked up by several other authors. These studies explore the presence of informality in other spheres of urban life, including street vendors and street markets, whilst still mostly being restricted to cities of the Global South. As Goodwood (2016) notes, a study of developing cities is now inconceivable without using the concept of informality. In comparison to the Global North, informality in the developing world is understood to be a much wider concept, …su su i g ot o l deliberately concealed activities but also ordinary petty economic activities that have not been fully or effectively legislated for, (Ibid., 208). In other words, the continued presence of informality is as much a function of illicit activities by informal agents as it is due to an inept state that has provided the society with legislative blind spots. In the developed economies, however, the informal or shadow economies only indicate activities that are deliberately concealed from the authorities (Schneider 2016). In effect, this othering of informality (and by extension the agents and practitioners of informality) in relation to formality (and by extension the state and its authorities, the normatively attributed agents and practitioners of formality) brings into focus the logic of formalisation. The 'formal' is based on a particular regulatory logic that is typically crafted, by the state (and hence considered legitimate ), as opposed to the 'informal', which is seen as a set of practices that is instantaneous, impromptu, and ever-changing.5 The state s synoptic and abstracted viewpoint, Scott (1998) argues, is both the source and means of attempts to standardise informality, to reign it into the existing logic of formalisation; and, as Porter (2011, 118) terms it, to clean up the disorder and codify the messiness . This leads us to the second issue with the formal-informal dichotomy, its conception of the state .
Goodwood s and Schneider s independent considerations, coupled with the strict othering mentioned above, appear one-sided. Both positions provide no reasons to
not treat informality in the developed economies as a broad concept, if not as broad
a concept as used in studies of developing cities. Not only does this epistemological stance perpetuate the strict and often unsubstantiated dichotomy, it also exposes another register at which this dichotomy is problematic, which stems directly from the first issue highlighted above. The dichotomy inadvertently forwards an idea of the state in the developed economies as one that is understood only vis-à-vis the failing and inept state in the developing economies. As such, this fails to provide an independent idea of the state in this context. Categorising activities that are only deliberately concealed as informality within developed economies suggests an all-pervasive state that is able to frame and enforce its laws at every instance and monitor all agents at all times for conformity. Taking street vending as his starting point, Devlin (2010) shows how the opaque and often contradictory nature of
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vending laws in New York resulted in street vendors adopting measures that would, if taken up in developing economies, be termed informal.6 The research conducted in Amsterdam s Dappermarkt also tells us that such a state is non-existent. It could be argued, therefore, that the formal state under this dichotomy is looked at simply as a monolithic entity that makes and enforces laws. This has resulted in studies that provide a narrow purview of both the notion of informality and the idea of the formal state per se. It is useful here to recall Mitchell s (1991, 95) objection to the idea of maintaining a separation between the state and the society it addresses (and is a part of):
The state should be addressed as an effect of detailed processes of spatial organization, temporal arrangement, functional specification, and supervision and surveillance, which create the appearance of a world fundamentally divided into state and society. The essence of modern politics is not policies formed on one side of this division being applied to or shaped by the other, but the producing and reproducing of this line of difference.
This project, therefore, has two major aims. Firstly, it aims to rescue an understanding of informality in the Global North from being a concept that only points to illegality. By studying traders and their everyday interaction with the formal laws in Amsterdam s Dappermarkt, I aim to show that informality has a broader meaning than illegality, one tends mores towards a -mentality . Secondly, the project looks to contribute to a better understanding of the contemporary state that attempts to come to terms with its informal agents. At a theoretical level, this necessitates a rethinking of the dichotomy since, I will argue, it is far more than a transactional relationship, as insisted by Porter (2011, 119) and Roy and AlSayyad (2004, 4). To effect a rethink on the dichotomy, it is proposed to approach the relationship as one that is dialectical. Using the concept of play as espoused by Gadamer, I will argue that a better conceptualisation of both the informal agents and the state can be arrived at when we recast the dichotomy as a relationship of
power and counter-power characterised by play.
The Formal-Informal Dialectic
The exercise of the logic of formalisation, in actuality, is usually an exercise of power. One such exercise is planning, as seen by the UN-Habitat s (2009) explicit statement that planning is a set of activities and practices that can fix informality. While questioning the ways in which power, in this instance, creates forms of
6De li , R a Tho as. Informal Urbanism: Legal Ambiguity, Uncertainty, and the Management of Street
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vulnerability (AlSayyad 2004) provides an avenue for planners to come to terms with its ameliorative effects, this project is more interested in problematising the relationship between formality and informality by questioning the logic of formalisation within the developed economies, as it is currently understood. In his defence of the use of the dichotomy, Lipton (1984, 196) argues, …the [i fo al sector] concept has become discredited on account of three alleged deficiencies: misplaced dualism, misplaced isolation, and confusion . Misplaced dualism refers to the empirical situation of the absence of a clear divide between formality and informality and the concepts behaving instead as a continuum.7 Lipton defends the dualism by noting that it is nevertheless useful for analytical purposes. Providing a slightly more nuanced defence, Porter (2011, 116) insists that this actually existing informality is produced by formal structures . She also emphasises their intimate relationship as one that is transactional (Ibid.). However, Porter sides with Lipton, stating that it is useful to…hold these odes of u a isatio disti t f o ea h other to explore the nature of their relations (Ibid.). If the nature of the relationship between formality and informality is understood by planning as one that is binary in nature, or transactional as Porter called it, it implies that it is, by definition, teleological. Even as planning aims to desert its rationalist-teleological approaches of the late-20th century through communicative and collaborative planning, we find that the perpetuation of the formal-informal dichotomy, albeit for analytical purposes, puts planning at the risk of continuing this stance. This emphasis on teleology also exposes the limited understanding of the formal state as one whose express purpose is to limit and extinguish informality.
As Devlin (2011, 146) argues, the nature of informality – a venture from the ground-up which often exists despite the laws that regulate space – makes it irreconcilable with mainstream rationalist planning theory. Any difference from the mainstream comes to automatically be seen as a problem for planning because of its rationalist approach (Sandercock 2000). A number of scholars have argued that informality is indeed a result of formal structures and laws. Pitting informal tactics as a resistance to the state s strategies of formalisation, Verloo (2017) follows what Scott (1998) termed as tacit knowledge to demonstrate that an understanding of the citizen s informal tactics is necessary to understand the state s formalising strategies, and thus calls for a refashioning of the state s assessment of informality altogether. Devlin s (2011) argument, as previously noted, takes this line of thought a step further. These arguments, however, betray planning s stance of formal embeddedness as a point of study. It is due to this embeddedness, which stems from treating the relationship in a transactional manner, that some scholars argue for a one-time (if not sweeping) step for the logic of formalisation to adopt in order to manage the messiness of informality. In other words, the fact that there exists a
7 The other two objections raised by Lipton – ispla ed isolatio a d o fusio – are beyond the scope of this
p oje t e ause the a e, u like the defe e fo the fi st o je tio o the ispla ed dualis , est i ted to the understanding of the concept within the disciplinary scope of labour economics. For more on those objections, see Lipton (1984, 197-198).
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school of thought which contends that formality has the capacity and the tools to
tackle informality, shows that planning is unable to study the relationship between
formality and informality in a non-transactional manner. The question of how a state already embedded in a position of power, and whose modus operandi when it comes to dealing with informality is to subject it to the crude logic of formalisation, is to understand informality therefore remains unanswered. A potential answer can be to frame the relationship as one that is dialectical instead of teleological.
Hegel s usage of the German word aufheben to denote the manner in which transition occurs in a dialectic is often translated as sublation . Aufheben carries several meanings (Magee 2010): (i) To raise up; (ii) To preserve or retain; and (iii) To cancel or abolish. However, in using this term, Hegel implies that the dialectic undergoes all three transitions simultaneously (Ibid., 238; emphasis my own). In other words, between what have been mutually recognised as two competing and agential notions, one – typically more powerful than the other – is seen, while facing resistance, to cancel and preserve the other at the same time, thereby lifting the unity to a new level wherein it exists in a form that is alien to both individual entities. This process for Hegel is continuous and is not something that ends in a resolution, it is a becoming and does not result in a being. Translated out of Hegel s dense language, a dialectical relationship between formality and informality entails that formalisation strategies actively aim to negate any informal tactics found on the ground. This position of power, as argued by Porter, is weakened to a certain extent in the eyes of the agents of informality when street-level bureaucrats (Lipsky 1980) display any form of pliability. This is also the issue with Devlin s call for informality-like flexibility in law making. The novelty triggered by the process of formalisation, however, often results in newer forms of informality, rather than their disappearance. This means, older forms of informality are in effect cancelled – by making them illegal or impossible through legal measures – while still preserving, unintentionally, the nature or characteristic of informality. In this ongoing process, continuities – other than in their intentions – can t be gauged in either the formal or the informal categories as they are now sublated to form new and distinct categories. To read the relationship as one that is dialectical then implies that both the state and the practitioners of informality are both proactive and reactive agents at the same time. Moreover, citizens engaged in informal practices are potentially less vilified. The reasons for informality are also rescued from either economic or structural inequalities (Devlin 2011) or lack of enforcement (Kanbur 2009) or insurgency (Roy 2009a) or as a new way of life (AlSayyad 2004).
A teleological, as opposed to a dialectical, reading of the relationship has resulted in a wide variety of studies that can be categorised into two groups. Firstly, studies that read informality using categories typically associated with formality: For instance, Morales (2010) studies traders in Chicago s Maxwell Street Market and attempts to appropriate their self-organization using Mead s brand of pragmatism; Amoah-Mensah (2016) uses categories of competitive advantage from organisation studies to understand the informal street vendors of Kumasi, Ghana. Secondly, studies that
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seek to learn from informality and offer lessons to formality in order to better the logic of formalisation: Devlin (2010) argues that opaque and often dense laws act as a barrier for informal agents to understand them, especially in the case of immigrants. In a separate article, Devlin (2011) follows this up by arguing for laws to be flexible at the stage of their formulation. Verloo (2017) calls for informal practices to be recognised as forms of citizenship and formality to study the performative encounters of these agents that end up producing alternative democratic realities .8 To understand informality as being instructional to formality undermines the role of the state, reducing it, as Roy (2009a; 2009b) shows, to an entity that simply negotiates, retaining its teleology.
For these reasons, an alternative conceptualisation is proposed, through which both the idea of the state and of informality becomes, arguably, clearer. Instead of treating formality and informality as a dichotomy that results in a hazy picture of both informality and the formal state as demonstrated above, it might serve to gain a better idea of both entities if we approach them as state power and counter-power. Immediately, such a conceptualisation does away with understanding the relation as a straightforward dichotomy. A Foucauldian conception of power tells us that power is disciplining and that it is perceived in such a manner that irrespective of its concrete presence or absence, the other always behaves as if it is present (Foucault 1977) Additionally, Foucault also notes how the notion of power is always exercised through state apparatuses (2001), distinguishing between the state and government . Government, under such a conception, is a practice of the state, a -mentality that is, in effect, the conduct of conducts . On the other hand, counter-power is seen by Dinerstein (2003, 6) as coming from below , a mode of resistance to the dominant power being expressed by the dominated. As will be expanded upon in the section on play , an ontological distinction between the dominated and dominant is inconsistent with the way it is found to occur in reality. Castells (2007, 239) provides a more cogent conceptualisation of counter-power, which he understands as, the capacity of a social actor to resist and challenge power relations that are institutionalised ; a capacity which can …e e tuall ha ge the po e relations institutionalized in society, (Ibid., 248). In both conceptions, the authors treat counter-power to be a mode of resistance to state power. However, there is no expansion on how the state/institutionalised power reacts to such a resistance. In other words, counter-power, as Dinerstein and Castells portray it, is also teleological. Just like how state power doesn t rest at the first instance of compliance from the other, I argue that counter-power also doesn t simply stop by offering a resistance to state power. In essence, both state power and counter-power are in a continuous engagement in which each acts and reacts based on the effects of its actions and reactions. Depicting state power, as Foucault does, as a disciplining force tells us that there is a driving logic behind it. While some, like Poulantzas (1973) term this driving logic as an ideology, it can be argued that the logic of formalisation forms a smaller
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aspect of the state s ideology. That said, seeing as to how the logic of formalisation remains similar to states of both the Global South and the Global North, essentially states that are both neoliberal and probably on the way to being a neoliberal state, the idea of the state as being driven by an ideological project is contentious.
On the other hand, while the notions of power and counter-power seemingly automatically imply a dominant party and a dominated party, the way it is to be conceptualised within the dialectics of play does not allow for an ontological distinction of that sort. Given how we understand counter-power to emanate all characteristics of the power of the state, except for its source, it cannot be distinguished into entities in which one is constantly dominant. In other words, power as I frame it can be the domain of either party, be it the traders or the state, and both have a driving logic behind them. Both the notions of the state and play will be expanded upon in upcoming sections.
ǮPlayǯing the Game
To read the relationship between state power and counter-power as a dialectical process allows us to place the play between these two entities under investigation. I follow the meaning of play as a dialectical concept as etched out by Gadamer (2004). Appropriating the concept as Gadamer develops it, we can state that the to-and-fro movement between power and counter-power as a unit has no goal for itself, other than the play itself. The action-reaction process is so central to the play between the state and the agents of counter-power that it carries on irrespective of who the actors are. This explains the abiding characteristic of this relationship. I re-read Devlin s (2011) work where, in providing an account of informal food stall operators in Brooklyn s Red Hook Park, he notes that formal actors did not bother to apply existing rules and regulations to these food vendors for over four decades. It was only when the patrons of these vendors began to shift from Latino families to mostly young, mostly white residents (Ibid., 148) – which led to mainstream media like The New York Times writing stories about these vendors – did the authorities feel like their hands were forced. Devlin rightly recognises that it was only due to the mainstream recognition that the formal state began to curb down on the food truck operators, but erroneously opines that the multicultural nature of the operators blinded them to existing laws. Re-reading this ethnographic account using the concept of play as briefly etched out above, we can state that the attention from NYT and other media made the state give itself enough reason to continue the game. In other words, the media attention was not a trigger as Devlin points out, but instead it was the catalyst in an already existing play. Other such situations can be seen in Anjaria s (2011) work where he provides an ethnographic account of how police and city officials in Mumbai decide when to intervene and evict street vendors and when
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to let them be. Owusu-Sekyere et al. (2016) provide an account of a city that chooses to use street vendors as political tools, evicting them when elections are approaching and letting them be as the festive season approaches.
Taking the point further, Gadamer makes a semantic observation when he notes that play often moves past the subjectivity of its players (Gadamer 2004, 104). The actual subject of the play, he notes, is not the subjectivity of the individual who, amongst other acts, also plays, but instead is the play itself. The play between state power and counter-power represents a to-and-fro movement of play as it follows itself (Ibid., 105). This can be seen both in Dunier s (1999) account of traders on the sidewalks of Manhattan and Palacio s (2016) observations in Santiago, Chile. On both occasions, the authors narrate how street vendors, constantly engaged in a game of hide and seek, escape the roving eyes of patrolling police officers by being at-the-ready to desert their vending space as soon as a police officer is spotted and returning to the space once the officer turns a corner. To understand both the formal state and the informal actors, we need to rescue the idea of both formality and informality from its agents and project them as state power and counter-power. As we had mentioned earlier, the concept of play notes how play itself is beyond the subjecthood of its players. To reconstruct the exercise of power from the perspective of the state, or the actions of the informal agents for that matter, does not tell us anything about its driving logic.9 Secondly, as with any game, the play between these two parties goes beyond the material dimensions. Clearly, the act of an informal agent shows a mode of resistance just as much as legislation by the state shows an intention of power. Nevertheless, the exercise of power and counter-power goes beyond these. Thirdly, there are certain unsaid rules of the game that shackle each party to a certain extent.10 The argument essentially is that the play between formality and informality as we have etched out cannot be reduced to either of these elements and is indeed an interactive iteration and hence dialectical in nature.11 The play between these two parties lies on a different ontological plane and only makes itself appear in each of their actions without being entirely independent of either. By engaging themselves in this play, each party enhances the play by bringing it to a fuller realisation.
A final characteristic of the formal-informal dichotomy that can be suitably appropriated from Gadamer s inquiry into play is the ease of play (Gadamer 2004, 105). Play, says Gadamer, is without effort . Gadamer goes on to make a phenomenological case, stating that the ease of play implies that there is an absence of any strain on the existence of the individual (Ibid). However, it can be argued that in terms of urban informality this can refer to the fact that an individual vendor can t choose not to engage in the play, making the play sans effort rather
9
This idea is app op iated f o Gada e s iti ue of Dilthe s nacherleben (re-living). See Gadamer (2004, 51-53).
10
To e plo e hethe these ules a e de i ed f o o e tio o o s or values or cultural specificities is beyond the scope of this project.
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than effortless. From the perspective of the state, policy measures do not mark out individual actors of informality, instead they attempt to engage with the actions of the actors. Morales (2011) gives an account of a trader in Chicago s Maxwell Street Market, wherein a new trader secured a trading license from the city council and aimed to use the formal legitimacy as a means to take over the space occupied by an (informal) trader who had been using the same space for 10 years. The resistance offered by the more experienced trader, which was backed up by his fellow traders, Morales notes, forced the newcomer to find his own space, thereby rendering the legitimacy meaningless.
Play, therefore, has its own essence. Moreover, as Gadamer points out, play merely reaches presentation through the players (Gadamer 2004, 103). We can see that this holds true for the formal-informal dichotomy as well. While Gadamer s development of the concept tells us that the play will continue irrespective of the player, it is important to remind ourselves that the dialectic nature of the dichotomy mandates that there be, not literally another player, but something that responds. As we can see from the examples mentioned above, the informal agent has no choice but to engage in the game and the formal structures have the liberty to engage in the play at will, an important characteristic of the relationship emerges: the play masters the players. The perpetuation of the formal-informal dialectic does not depend on the actors of the play but it depends on itself. Put differently, irrespective of whether the dialectic plays out in the Global North or the Global South, its characteristics remain the same. However, this does not imply that the way the state approaches the play across these settings remains similar. This is because, as we had seen earlier, the state s application of the logic of formalisation is arbitrary, at times even left to street-level bureaucrats, and more often than not contradicts itself. It is not governed by any logic other than that of the play itself. This points to the need to differentiate the state from government , or state power, and its practices of governance. In the upcoming section, I will argue that a Foucauldian analysis of the formal state provides us with some clarity on this matter.
What is the
Ǯstateǯ in formality?
We have so far not expanded on the notion of the formal , more than by pointing out the problematic presumptions made by those studying the dichotomy. At the centre of this study remains the notion of power. As pointed out by Lukes (1974) and by Foucault in multiple works, power goes beyond domination. Power is also not the sole domain of the state, as we will see later in this section. The idea of power as Foucault breaks it down not only positions the focus on the actions of the state, but the intention behind these actions. That the idea of informality by itself is seen as
18
something to be treated rather than left alone reiterates Schattschneider s (1960, 71; emphasis in the original) oft-repeated words:
All forms of political organization have a bias in favour of the exploitation of some kinds of conflict and the suppression of others, because organisation is the mobilisation of bias. Some issues are organised into politics while others are organised out.
Schattschneider s words continue to ring true, as Devlin s (2011) example of the treatment of food truck operators in Brooklyn s Red Hook Park shows. Providing a view to power as a stand-in for negotiability, Roy (2009b) shows how the political elite can use or even suspend formal laws as they see fit in order to promote a particular agenda. This reiterates the observation of Lipsky s (1980), that of street-level bureaucrats who deem it fit to selectively apply formal laws. Street-street-level bureaucrats , Lipsky notes, are individual state authorities who find it pertinent and even necessary to bend the rules in order to accommodate informality, albeit temporarily. Further:
The decisions of street-level bureaucrats, the routines they establish, and the devices they invent to cope with uncertainties and work pressures, effecti el e o e the pu li poli ies the a out… [P]ublic policy is not best understood as made in legislatures or top-floor suites of high-ranking administrators, because in important ways it is actually made in the crowded offices and daily encounters of street-level workers. (Lipsky 1980, xii)
The state as a negotiating entity rather than an authority that enforces laws, even if arbitrarily, can be an avenue to understand the state in the dialectics of formality and informality. Such a state is an instance of the Foucauldian state, one whose power is not centralised and is in fact a field of multiple forces engaged in differing battles, so much so that the fate of the informal actor is left in the hands of the bureaucrat on the streets at times. As Roy and AlSayyad (2004, 5) note, the organising logic of the formal state is one that … o stitutes the ules of the ga e, dete i i g the atu e of transactions between individuals and institutions and within institutions . Even as this reiterates the transactional nature of the relationship which we had problematized earlier, it also points to a state that is Foucauldian in nature, one which shows the distinction made by Foucault between government and state (2001, 215). This distinction with respect to formality and informality can be stated as the distinction between the visible force of authorities –institutions, or street-level bureaucrats – who attempt to alter policies or negotiate with informal actors on the one hand, and the
19
invisible influence on the informal actors that, without turning to instances of enforcement, highlights the fact of their informality.
Nevertheless, to see the state as one that governmentalizes with the intention of outdoing the informal actors implies that we pay no credence to the reaction from the informal actors. Roy and AlSayyad (2006) position the negotiability value as a pivot of the relationship between the two parties, noting how certain infractions by the informal actors become a topic of negotiation, opening up a political space which is different from an outright enforcement of the law or an alteration of the law to deem the infraction illegal or illegitimate. Formalisation, in other words, reduces the scope of negotiability (Ibid., 12), making the structural power not a monolithic entity but a fragmented domain of multiple and competing sovereignties (Ibid.). There are two conclusions we can draw here. The state as a governmentalizing entity, as Foucault puts it, exercises power, which can be seen as a conduct of conducts (Foucault 2015, 341). The negotiating state, while exercising power, is also the target of power that is exercised by the informal actors. To rephrase in Foucauldian terms, the mentality of the government is not a sole property of the state. To rescue this mentality from the state and pitch it as a property of the informal actors as well is a natural result of reading their relationship as a dialectical play. In other words, not only does the state conduct conducts, being driven by the play between state power and counter-power, the informal actors also conduct the state s conduct in a particular way. Going back to the conception of power being beyond domination, we can see that the actions of the informal agents goes beyond resistance to governmental power, and expresses itself as a power that drives the state to a political space of contestation it is traditionally not favourable to. It is, as we ve seen with the analysis of play , a state that not only acts/reacts to informal actors, but reacts as a result of being a target of power. This leads us to the second conclusion that can be drawn from the notion of the negotiating state . As pointed out using several cases earlier, reading the formal state as one that is internally contradicting and multi-faceted in nature holds true, but in attempting to not paint the state as a monolithic entity, we run the risk of characterising the informal actors in precisely the same way. As we had seen earlier, the play masters the players and puts them in a situation where, more often than not, being a part of the play is not optional. However, this does not imply that all informal actors might come with different intentions in expressing counter-power. Such a reading of pluralism within informal actors would result in a fragmented state that appeals and fails to appeal to everyone and no one simultaneously.
By arguing that the state s action/reaction to the play is beyond its material actions, an often-invoked idea of the state-informal agent relationship is put under the spotlight. Such an idea was first proposed by de Certeau (1984) by using the concepts of strategies and tactics .
20 By strategy , de Certeau refers to:
…the calculus of force-relationships which becomes possible when a subject of will and power can be isolated from an environment . A strategy assumes a place that can be circumscribed as proper and thus serve as the basis for generating relations with an exterior distinct from it, (Ibid., xix; emphasis provided by translator).
A tactic, on the other hand, refers to …a al ulus hi h a ot ou t on a proper (a spatial or institutional localization), nor thus on a borderline distinguishing the other as a visible totality, (Ibid.). Strategies, in essence, are practices of the state that have a certain legitimacy behind them. They are actions of agents who are in positions of power over informal actors. As de Certeau notes (Ibid., 36), as soon as an actor wielding power can be isolated, so can their strategies. Strategies are governed by a specific type of knowledge, one sustained and determined by the power to provide oneself with one s own place (Ibid.).12 Tactics, on the other hand, are practices employed to resist strategies. They are determined by the absence of a proper locus (Ibid., 37). As they are always a reaction, tactics lack the power that is wielded by strategies. Tactics are also a resisting force since they are more flexible and adjusted to perpetual mutation (Ibid., 41). The dichotomy is captured by de Certeau using the metaphor of an organized military fighting a guerrilla force. The army has the advantage of planning a general path of action from a distanced point of view, taking the liberty to view the adversary as a whole. On the other hand, the guerrilla force simply reacts to what is presented to it and does so using any actions it sees fit at that point. While this freedom provides a certain tactical mobility , it is as de Certeau points out, a mobility that must accept the chance offerings of the moment (Ibid., 37).
The distinction put forward by de Certeau, however, tells us little about the reasons why these strategies and tactics are developed in the first place. Competing ideas of the state as developed over the 20th century substantiates this line of criticism. To achieve a cogent conceptualisation of the state has proven to be more difficult than initially thought. Weber s idea of the state as an actual organisation has proven a useful starting point (Mitchell 1991, 86). Such a state would consist of a set of administrative, policing, and military, organizations headed, and more or less well coordinated by, an executive authority, (Skocpol 1979, 29). Its distinct existence apart from the society was hence emphasised. As we have seen, however, the formal state of today does not fit this description. Another notion of the state comes from the Marxist vein. Poulantzas (1973) conception comes closest to being relevant to an analysis useful for our purposes. Poulantzas venture of unconcealing the structure
12
While de Ce teau s defi itio li its st ategies to a ode ist outlook, it a safel e said that the state that employs strategies today does not necessarily have a modernist driving force.
21
behind the concrete institutions of the state might have ultimately failed, but as Abrams (1988, 69) points out, sociologists, like everyday citizens, have often in their work experienced such a force at a common-sense level. The difficulty in studying the state might, Abrams (Ibid., 63) insists, point to a backstage institutionalisation of political power behind the on-stage agencies of government. Abrams proposes to add to this line of thought by approaching the state as an ideological project so that the key to the issue is to acknowledge, as Poulantzas came close to doing, the cogency of the idea of the state as an ideological power and treat that as a compelling object of analysis, (Ibid., 79).
We can, however, by analysing the relationship between the formal state and informal agents as a play of intentions rather than actions argue that the nature of the state, as has been outlined above, can be subject to criticism. The relationship between the state and informal agents is not a transactional relationship that the state constantly negotiates and renegotiates, instead it is an exercise of power and counter-power that conducts the conduct of both parties. A state that both shapes and is shaped exercises characteristics that are beyond the negotiating state. Similarly, we are also able to challenge the idea of an informal agent as simply someone who resists the power of the state by using tactics as she deems fit. Even as actions of the informal agents are reactive, they are only reacting to the challenge put forward by the state at the register of the play and are not particularly targeting the strategies of the state. To read the relationship within the ontological realm of play allows us to look past these exercises of power and investigate closer the mentality, as Foucault might call it, expressed by both the state and the informal agents.
The theoretical framework developed in this chapter comes in handy to analyse the observations made in Amsterdam s Dappermarkt. In the upcoming chapter, I provide a brief history to street markets in Amsterdam, followed by a description of the Dappermarkt. This is followed by three instances that showcase the -mentality mentioned above.
II
23
In this section, I expand upon the research conducted over a short period of four weeks at Amsterdam s Dappermarkt. In its methodological approach, the research can be divided into two parts. Firstly, it aims to investigate the play between formal structures and informal agents as it presents itself. This is recognised through events that indicate crucial moments where one actor pushed the other to engage in the play. Play as we had discussed earlier, is a to-and-fro movement that occurs irrespective of the players and is governed by a logic that acts as the conditions for the possibility of the actions. The established relationship is not dependent on the players but instead presents itself in and through certain events that mark and acknowledge the play between these parties. Hence, in establishing the play between formal actors and informal traders in Amsterdam s street markets, it would be necessary to identify events that typify this to-and-fro movement.
From following the actions of informal agents that then trigger a reaction from the state in terms of policies or other formal measures, the research aims to gather an understanding of the formal state and ascertain its driving logic that presents a particular reaction, as opposed to any other reaction, to identified informal acts. As mentioned earlier, Schattschneider s insight that …o ga isatio is the o ilisatio of bias informs us that not every act that could otherwise be considered informal is actually tagged in such a manner by the state. Going by previous observational works conducted in the Dappermarkt,13 it can be seen that Market Managers not only possess intricate knowledge about the everyday proceedings of the markets, they also at times shield certain potentially informal acts from the eyes of the policy makers. To this effect, a mixture of methods was used. Data for this research was collected primarily through desk research and by conducting semi-formal interviews. Several vendors currently trading at the Dappermarkt were interviewed over a period of four weeks. Interviews were also conducted with a former market supervisor, a former market manager and some impressions were gained from informal and off the record conversations with one of the current market managers. Archival information was procured from the official archive of the city of Amsterdam.
The Study
This study set out to explore the everydayness of the grey-area in the play between formality and informality, as evidenced in Amsterdam s Dappermarkt. The aim of the study is to argue for a continuous relationship between informality and formality, rather than one that is transactional or characterised by negotiability. The latter is framed to imply that formality s aim is to eventually get rid of informal practices altogether. Rather than studying this relationship through its teleological intent, it was argued earlier that assessing it as a dialectical play helps in exploring a different
13
24
perspective in the relationship. Such a perspective places the ethnographic focus neither on moments of explicit informality nor on formal intervention, but instead highlights those transitionary moments when informality builds to a certain level that formality cannot not intervene. While Anjaria (2011) and Owusu-Sekyere et al. (2016) identify such moments in Mumbai and Kumasi respectively, both studies show situations where the very presence of street vendors is informal. In both cities, there was, at least at the time of writing the respective articles, no formal regulations that already expect compliance from the traders. Any action conducted by them, in theory, is then informal. On the other hand, traders in Amsterdam s Dappermarkt have been under a gamut of legal regulations since at least the late 17th century. Yet, there are moments when what is theoretically referred to as informality in the case of the Global South are found in the Dappermarkt. These are moments that don t necessarily pose a challenge to the logic of the law and regulations but instead make banal attempts to subtly resist some of the restrictions prescribed by the law. In other words, these informal transgressions are neither illegal nor do they explicitly pose a challenge to the existing regulations. These moments of counter-power build to such a level quickly that it forces the formal structures to react. Thus, informal actions expose a certain lack of a grounded understanding on the law s part, apart from providing an opportunity for policy makers to reflect and possibly reinvent the intent of the regulations. Essentially, these informal moments are also seen as a
reaction to a slow building up of formal control.
In understanding formality and informality as actions of agents involved in a constant tussle of action-reaction, the focus shifts to the intentions behind these actions and reactions from each party rather than the actions. Using this theoretical standpoint, three instances in the Dappermarkt are examined. Contrary to a prevalent understanding of formality – wherein a reiteration of formality in the form of a possible reinvention of regulations displays an intent to do away with informality altogether – observations from several visits to the Dappermarkt over a period of three weeks expose a different mentality as such. On the other hand, informality, typically understood as a strategy against the formal structures was observed to be actions that, more often than not, actively sought formal legitimacy. On occasions when this formal legitimacy was refused, informal actions continued to persist, albeit thanks to unique circumstantial conditions. When formal structures responded positively, however, it ended up legitimising the process of achieving this nod as well. Three specific instances form the basis of such an interpretation. In the first instance, the power that is expected from the city authorities was seen to have been weakened since the traders were able to push the law to a certain extent, leaving the formal actors with limited scope to react. Another instance highlights the difficulty faced by the traders in influencing policy, thereby laying bare the disconnect between formal law and everyday events. The final instance demonstrates a moment when formal intervention was not only welcomed by the traders, it was found that this mediation was ultimately favourable to both the city authorities and traders.
III
Street Markets in Amsterdam: From Fame
to Crisis
26
The city of Amsterdam and its markets have had a long journey alongside each other, so much so that one has become indispensable to the other. The Central Market to the West of the city, with its on-and-off history of being the city s primary destination for fresh produce, dates its origin back to the late 19th century when the city itself was undergoing an economic boom. The then state envisioned the Central Market as a destination for produce from farms across the country and as a means of controlling the increasing gap between prices for produce in Amsterdam and in other parts of the Netherlands (City Archive 2017).14 City administrators of this time across Europe also saw the need to portray themselves as an authority figure who could guarantee a steady supply of food (Kaplan 1984), and Amsterdam was no exception. This, coupled with the need to control the growing popularity of markets in the city, saw it taking over the administration of the more nascent markets such as the Albert Cuypmarkt in 1905. These growing street markets were nevertheless seen as … haoti pla es he e diffe e t people a e togethe to do usi ess, Janssens (2014, 102), making them hard for the city to manage. The city s response over time is characterised by Janssens as one that aims to both facilitate street markets and at the same time police them. In other words, the logic of formalisation discussed in earlier sections has dictated the state s agenda when it comes to tending to the burgeoning street markets. However, this has not prevented traders from wanting to be part of the city s famous markets. The strict licensing process sees a waiting list for markets such as the Albert Cuypmarkt and the Dappermarkt extend up to 14 years (City Archive 2017).
One of the earliest instances of informality in street markets in Amsterdam could be tagged on the street peddlers of the 18th century. Licensed peddlers, recognised under registered and fee-paying Guilds, lodged complaints to the city administrators about illegal peddlers who roamed around the city selling their wares, thereby escaping both the city s taxes and creating unregistered competition to the Guilds. In line with the typically protectionist states of Western Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, the city sided with the Guilds and announced that st a ge s… ho a e ot residents of the city aren t allowed to sell anything on the streets (Huberts 1940, 16).15 This hostile attitude towards traders per se extended, argues Janssens (2014, 103-105), to traders within a regulated market space as well, with the city s moralistic attitude painting the traders as immoral agents who ruin the morality of the market. However, reiterating the position developed earlier of how for the sake of convenience, arbitrary moments are chosen when such informalities are permitted by the state itself, Huberts (1940, 18) notes how traders in Amsterdam were allowed to sell excess produce, especially perishable ones, on the streets, in the same way an unlicensed peddler was at the time.
The early 19th century also saw for the first time the centralisation of the market place in Amsterdam, with the city creating a bureaucratic body to oversee a team of
14
https://archief.amsterdam/inventarissen/overzicht/30028.nl.html [Accessed on 13 May 2017]
15
27
ten local market managers (Janssens 2014, 106). The idea of allocating a fixed spot for the trader didn t come around until 1869, when the new Market Regulations of 1857, combined with the General Police Regulations of 1869, brought about a more rigid structure to the way markets in the city were organised (Ibid., 105-106). However, with the city s population expanding and unorganised peddlers offering their wares and produce to people outside of the Canal District – in places like Albert Cuypstraat for instance – the city was once again in a position where it had to choose between regulating what these free markets and letting them be (Ibid., 106). Formal tolerance saw certain streets, like the Albert Cuypstraat in the South-East, Bilderdijkkade and Ten Katestraat in the West, and Dapperstraat in the East, being earmarked as streets where peddling was allowed, but the regulations that were imposed on markets within the Canal District didn t seem to apply to these. This differential regimes of regulation, it could be argued, is an example of informality arising out of the formal structures. More importantly, however, taxes were not collected from these peddlers (Huberts 1940, 33), mainly because, as Janssens (2014, 107) points out, these markets were not considered by the city to be essential . Despite this, the city could not control the rapidly increasing growth of these free markets . The expanding free markets , initially marked by the randomness of their assembling and tentatively regulated by the city by assigning particular streets, eventually became a permanent fixture that dotted the city s newly expanded neighbourhoods. Thus, the expansion of the Department of Market Affairs arms that included these free markets into its fold in 1922 eventually resulted in traders of these markets also being taxed. This, however, did not stop the rapid increase of applications for permits, which went up as much as 15 times between 1921 and 1925. A new Peddling Regulation in 1934 saw the city making renewed attempts at capping the number of peddlers allowed to 4,000, almost half of the then existing 7,500 peddlers (Huberts 1940, 55). The war period, predictably, saw the number of peddlers dramatically fall from around 3,500 in 1940 to 659 in 1944 (Janssens 2014, 110). The Amsterdam peddler, historically, was seen as both a nuisance and, effectively, the scapegoat for the city s own inability to properly manage its markets. However, the forced regulations that saw the streets where peddlers were themselves frequenting being turned into regular markets, effectively wiped out the need for peddlers to ply their trade. This attitude of attempting to reign in informal agents by first constricting them, spatially, and then bringing them under a certain law, was the underlying logic of the city prior to the corruption scandals in 2012. Contemporary Amsterdam s markets are mostly found within these same streets, while still being heavily regulated, barring the numerous pop-up markets (or vrijmarkts ) on King s Day or neighbourhood days. However, as Janssens (2014, 110-111) notes, traders in these regular markets still seem to be considered as a section of the society whose use of public space is otherwise tolerated by the city. In other words, the policy intent, it could be said, remains at the level of managing rather than actively encouraging street markets. Passed in 2008, the Regulations for Street Trade went the extra mile to ensure that the spirit of peddling did not return to the
28
streets of Amsterdam. The long-standing yet complicated registration and licensing process, at times, even leaves traders on a waiting list that, for popular markets like the Albert Cuypmarkt and Dappermarkt, stretches almost 14 years. Interestingly, however, Janssens points to the flexibility that has been built into the above-mentioned regulations. The Lipskyean street-level bureaucrat comes in the form of the Market Manager, the person in-charge of drawing lots and allotting non-permanent trading spots in the market to applicants in the waiting list, amongst other tasks. The Market Regulations demand a certain level of interpretation and adjustment on the part of the Market Manager, who has to respond to unpredictable conditions like freak weather changes or large events that draws huge crowds, (Ibid., 112), or even large-scale infrastructure refurbishments – as will be expanded upon in the next chapter. On the other hand, the in-built flexibility puts the Market Manager in a vulnerable position as she comes face to face with irate traders who, at times due to a few minutes delay in turning up for their stalls, stand to lose their spot for the day. It is here that the market master s social connections with the traders resist this strict regulation. Interestingly, when a few market managers were arrested in 2012 on corruption charges, the city s response was to further increase its policing of the markets. A report by the municipality s Bureau of Integrity argued that the social closeness between the traders and the Market Managers led to the corruption (Integriteit Bureau 2012). The report s main recommendations, those that have been kick-started and are on the way to being fully implemented, included total centralisation of the management of markets in the city, thereby taking away the tasks of the Market Manager from the space of the market itself. These tasks were instead allocated to officials who now come under the direct control of the Gemeente. The effects of this move are profound, as will be expanded upon in the next chapter.
A few preliminary observations can be made from the above account. Firstly, the peddlers of the 19th century – who neither paid taxes nor registered themselves in Guilds – have given reasons for the state to be sceptical of traders in general. This attitude, for some reason, extends to this day. The city s attempt to hand more discretionary powers to the market managers backfired to an embarrassing degree when corrupt market managers obscured fair enforcement of the law. The city s response of making structural changes to the role of the market manager and effectively reversing the decentralisation of market administration, shows that the state s intent still remains at the level of using policy measures to control and fix any informality found on the ground.
