Transcending the Formal/Informal Distinction: Commercial Relations in Africa and Russia in the Post-1989 World (with J. Guyer, 2002).

In much of the world, the ten years since the fall of the Berlin Wall have seen a decline in the reach of the state at the national level, as the “informal sector” became increasingly responsible for provisioning, employment, and enrichment within regional economies. To understand commercial life in this context, we argue that it is necessary to move beyond assumptions about formal and informal economies as two different structures. Instead, we suggest that ethnographic research needs to focus on the process of regularization, which can occur through both state actions and social construction. The study of key commodities and commodity chains is one way of ethnographically approaching regularization processes in both formal and informal sectors. To illustrate our approach by examining case studies of two commodities that cross formal/informal sectors: vodka in Russia and newspaper distribution in Nigeria .

Obukhova, Elena and Jane Guyer (2002). Transcending the Formal/Informal Distinction: Commercial Relations in Africa and Russia in the Post-1989 World. In Theory in Economic Anthropology, J. Ensminger, ed. p. 199-220. Alta Mira Press: Walnut Creek, CA.