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.
Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations
Introduction: Street Vending in the (Neoliberal) City: A Global Perspective on the Practices and Policies of a Marginalized Economy
Kristina Graaff and Noa Ha
PART I: RESPONDING TO URBAN AND GLOBAL NEOLIBERAL POLICIES
Chapter 1. Flexible Families: Latina/o Food Vending in Brooklyn, New York
Kathleen Dunn
Chapter 2. Street Vending and the Politics of Space in New York City
Ryan Thomas Devlin
Chapter 3. Creative Resistance: The Case of Mexico City’s Street Artisans and Vendors
Veronica Crossa
PART II: STREET VENDING AND ETHNICITY
Chapter 4. Metropolitan Informality and Racialization: Street Vending in Berlin’s Historical District
Noa Ha
Chapter 5. Selling Memory and Nostalgia in the Barrio: Mexican and Central American Women (Re)Create Street Vending Spaces in Los Angeles
Lorena Muñoz
Chapter 6. Ethnic Contestations over African American Fiction: The Street Vending of Street Literature in New York City
Kristina Graaff
PART III: THE SPATIAL MOBILITY OF URBAN STREET VENDING
Chapter 7. The Urbanism of Los Angeles Street Vending
Kenny Cupers
Chapter 8. Selling in Insecurity—Living with Violence: Eviction Drives against Street Food Vendors in Dhaka, and the Informal Politics of Exploitation
Benjamin Etzold
Chapter 9. The Street Vendors Act and Pedestrianism in India: A Reading of the Archival Politics of the Calcutta Hawker Sangram Committee
Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay
PART IV: HISTORICAL ACCOUNTS OF STREET VENDING
Chapter 10. Street Vending, Political Activism, and Community Building in African American History: The Case of Harlem
Mark Naison
Chapter 11. The Roots of Street Commerce Regulation in the Urban Slave Society of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Patricia Acerbi
Notes on Contributors
About the Author :
Kristina Graaff is Assistant Professor of American Studies at Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany.
Review :
“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
