Informalization of the State: Reflections from an Urban World of Translations

Abstract

The project of globalizing informality requires the circulation of concepts and theories from the ‘South’ to the ‘North’. It also relies on intertextuality and exchanges across languages and sites of academic production. This essay is a reaction to the collection of papers presented in this forum. It argues for more academic conversations between languages and cities in order to contribute to a general state theory.

Urban Commoning as a Vehicle Between Government Institutions and Informality: Collective Gardening Practices in Tampere and Narva

“…Placeless interpretation of informality is impossible (Haid and Hilbrandt, 2019), and this therefore means that informality and any commoning entangled with it evolve together with features of spaces and urbanity. Besides the modalities of informal state practices already mentioned, this article examines two contingent features of urban politics: networked movements (McFarlane, 2012;Boudreau, 2019) and the multiplicity of practised spaces (Hinchliffe, 2010;Kip et al, 2015) in the commoning process. First, networked movements challenge informality as a bounded territorial category located on the edges of urban dynamics.…”

“…As McFarlane (2012: 105) argues, 'the shifting divide between informality and formality does not only occur in particular places, but in the movement of practices through different places'. This means that distributed agencies and multiple registers of action articulating the everyday with the political events become part of urban politics and changing urbanities (Boudreau, 2019). Second, the multiplicity of practised spaces appears within articulated stories, durations and trajectories of change (Massey, 2005).…”

“…Nevertheless, the notion of the 'urban' cannot be taken for granted in commoning practices because the original idea of the commons is grounded in rural settings and requires elaboration for urban conditions (Huron, 2015;Kip, 2015). Therefore, in addition to the above mentioned modalities of informal state practices, this article examines the contingent features of urbanity (politics): networked movements (McFarlane, 2012;Boudreau, 2019) and the multiplicity of practised spaces (Hinchliffe, 2010;Kip et al, 2015) in the commoning process. We introduce these features of urbanity and the three modalities of informal state practices in more detail in the following theoretical sections.…”

“…Haid and Hilbrandt (2019: 552) indicate that 'most contemporary conceptions do not account for the ways in which informality is embedded in the constitution of states'. Informality forces us to take urbanization and urban politics seriously in our understanding of state formations (Boudreau, 2017;2019). Researchers from different disciplines are increasingly interested in studying community gardening and political gardening as the commons (Eizenberg, 2012;Colding and Barthel, 2013;Bigell, 2015).…”

Urban Informality and the State: Geographical Translations and Conceptual Alliances

“…As translations require developing new terminologies, re‐naming constellations of actors and ordering categories anew, they allow for a process through which new ideas arise. As Boudreau (, this forum) argues, translations require ‘diversifying our theoretical sources of inspiration’ ( ibid . : 597), as well as a constant dialogue between different sites of inquiry.…”