Informal Economies and Power

The global ubiquity of informal economic activities has turned informality into a key policy question, not least in international peace- and state-building. This book explores a core aspect of economic informality: its resilience despite comprehensive international anti-informality operations.

Using Kosovo as an illustrative case, Danielsson suggests that to understand the resilience of informality, two distinct areas of practice need to be studied in conjunction rather than separately. The first concerns the professional practices enacted by international organisations in their attempts to formalise the informal economy in Kosovo. The second area of practice concerns the everyday informal economic practices of social agents in Kosovo. To study these areas of practice at their junction, Danielsson uses Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic power and argues that in post-conflict Kosovo, the distinct practices have become interwoven and co-constitutive of a novel ordering and meaning of informality. The resilience of the informal thus plays out through – while undermining and reinforcing the need of – the international anti-informality operations.

Including scholarship from global governance, global political economy and social theory, this book’s original perspective on informal economies and power will appeal to scholars and professionals located in peace studies, development studies, and the field of international relations.

Anna Danielsson is a researcher and lecturer at the Department of Government at Uppsala University, Sweden. In 2016–2018, she was a visiting postdoctoral researcher at the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University, UK. Her research is situated at the nexus of international relations, international political economy, peace- and state-building, and the history and sociology of (scientific) knowledge. In her current work, Danielsson focuses on questions pertaining to the production of knowledge and expertise in peace- and statebuilding interventions, the production of and struggles over epistemic authority, and the role of the (social) sciences in governing social life.