The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, Volume 3: A hitchhiker’s guide to informal problem-solving in human life

For a post-human hitchhiker, human life – with its anxiety, ageing, illness and constant need for problem-solving – may look unviable. Yet, for humans, the life struggle is softened by human touch, human emotion and human cooperation.

The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, Volume 3 continues the journey of the two previous volumes into the world’s open secrets, unwritten rules and hidden practices. It focuses on issues of emotional ambivalence and pressures of the digital age. The informal practices presented in this volume demonstrate the urgency of alleviating tensions between continuity and all-too-rapid change and the need to tackle the central problem of modern societies – uncertainty.

The volume takes a reader on a ‘biographical’ journey through elusive, taken-for-granted or banal ways of getting things done from over 70 countries and world regions. It offers innovative understanding of the significance of fringes, and challenges the assumption that informality is associated exclusively with poverty, underdevelopment, the Global South, oppressive regimes or the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. It also maps the patterns of informality around the globe; identifies specific informal practices in a context-sensitive way; and documents their ambivalent impact on people engaged in problem-solving, on societies in which these problems arise, and on humanity overall.

Praise for The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, Volume 3

‘This book tells a story of human cooperation. It is not the narrative you’ll find in books teaching you how to solve problems. It is an assemblage of something much more endemic, fundamentally human, and much more pervasive than we tend to think of informality. It involves money and power, but also the alternative currencies of gaining advantage or gaming the system.’
Bruce Schneier, author of A Hacker's Mind

‘Alena Ledeneva’s latest database of rule bending is a goldmine for documentary makers and storytellers. Entries from 70 countries, covering a human lifespan from Chinese “anchor babies” to funeral feasts in Azerbaijan, offer remarkable insights into the way the world really works.’ Lucy Ash, journalist

• Language: English
• Publisher: UCL Press
• Release date: Feb 26, 2024
• ISBN: 9781800086173

Book preview

The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality

FRINGE

Series Editors

Alena Ledeneva and Peter Zusi, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, UCL

The FRINGE series explores the roles that complexity, ambivalence and immeasurability play in social and cultural phenomena. A cross-disciplinary initiative bringing together researchers from the humanities, social sciences and area studies, the series examines how seemingly opposed notions such as centrality and marginality, clarity and ambiguity, can shift and converge when embedded in everyday practices.

Alena Ledeneva is Professor of Politics and Society at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies of UCL.

Pert Zusi is Associate Professor of Czech and Comparative Literature at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies of UCL.

The Global

Encyclopaedia of

Informality

A hitchhiker’s guide to informal

problem-solving in human life

Volume 3

Edited by Alena Ledeneva

with

Elizabeth Teague, Petra Matijevic,

Gian Marco Moisé, Piotr Majda

and Malika Toqmadi

First published in 2024 by

UCL Press

University College London

Gower Street

London WC1E 6BT

Available to download free: www.uclpress.co.uk

Collection © Editor, 2024

Text © Contributors, 2024

Images © Contributors and copyright holders named in the captions, 2024

The authors have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the authors of this work.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library.

Any third-party material in this book is not covered by the book’s Creative Commons licence. Details of the copyright ownership and permitted use of third-party material is given in the image (or extract) credit lines. If you would like to reuse any third-party material not covered by the book’s Creative Commons licence, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright owner.

This book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. This licence allows you to share and adapt the work for non-commercial use providing attribution is made to the author and publisher (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work) and any changes are indicated.

Attribution should include the following information:

Ledeneva, A. (ed). 2024. The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality: A hitchhiker’s guide to informal problem-solving in human life, Volume 3. London: UCL Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800086142

Further details about Creative Commons licences are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/

ISBN: 978-1-80008-616-6 (Hbk.)

ISBN: 978-1-80008-615-9 (Pbk.)

ISBN: 978-1-80008-614-2 (PDF)

ISBN: 978-1-80008-617-3 (epub)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800086142

Series editors’ preface

The UCL Press FRINGE series presents work related to the themes of the UCL FRINGE Centre for the Study of Social and Cultural Complexity.

The FRINGE series is a platform for cross-disciplinary analysis and the development of ‘area studies without borders’. ‘FRINGE’ is an acronym standing for Fluidity, Resistance, Invisibility, Neutrality, Grey zones, and Elusiveness – categories fundamental to the themes that the Centre supports. The oxymoron in the notion of a ‘FRINGE CENTRE’ expresses our interest in (1) the tensions between ‘area studies’ and more traditional academic disciplines; and (2) social, political, and cultural trajectories from ‘centres to fringes’ and inversely from ‘fringes to centres’.

A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Informal Problem-Solving in Human Life is the third volume of The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality. It continues to advance the central themes of the series – informality, human cooperation, local knowledge and global conjunctions, context-sensitive comparisons and context-free patterns for area studies without borders. This time, the journey into societies’ open secrets, unwritten rules and hidden practices is, quite literally, life-long: it starts with an ‘anchor baby’ born in the United States and ends with the practices of digitalising death rituals in China. If a planetary hitchhiker visited Earth, this volume would be a perfect guide to informal problem-solving, or know-how, which all insiders tend to use without sharing it with outsiders.

The volume resonates with the core objectives of the FRINGE series both theoretically and empirically. Theoretically, the volume points to the centrality of the informal, which remains a key feature of human experience, even if fluid, invisible and resistant to articulation. It focuses on the potential of informality studies and argues that network-based expertise, such as that of the researchers represented in this volume, is itself a solution to the problem of compartmentalisation of knowledge and the extinction of polymaths. International experts in economics, social psychology, anthropology, urban planning, architecture, sociology, political science and young scholars alike join forces in addressing global challenges and capturing key changes in contemporary societies around the world.

The limitations of state-centric approaches to tackling global crises transfer the pressure onto individual migrants and entrepreneurs; families of those in need of care, job or dwelling; and communities and networks capable of self-governing. The main argument of the proposed volume is the need to re-evaluate the potential of informal cooperation in human life, which reduces social and cultural complexity, uncertainty, divisiveness of societies, as well as to integrate such informal cooperation into policies for digital, demographic and ecological challenges.

Alena Ledeneva and Peter Zusi

School of Slavonic and East European Studies, UCL

To Nina Sofia Woodgates

Contents

List of figures

List of tables

Informal shortcuts at complex crossings: a preface

Acknowledgements

The raison d’etre of informality studies: an introduction

Alena Ledeneva

1Being born

Introduction: reproduction and emotional ambivalence by Michele Rivkin-Fish

1.1 Mei bao ma (China) by Hui Guo

1.2 Khamstvo (USSR, Russia) by Anastasia Novkunskaya, Daria Litvina and Anna Temkina

1.3 Selektivni abortus/tuđa večera (Montenegro) by Diāna Kiščenko

1.4 Xiaoerni (China) by Ling Meng

1.5 Parovoziki (Russia) by Ekaterina Pereprosova

1.6 Cumătrism (Moldova) by Andrei Iovu

1.7 Obnalichivanie (Russia) by James McMeehan Roberts

1.8 Rabenmutter (Germany, Austria, German-speaking Switzerland) by Elena Denisova-Schmidt and Lena Nicolas-Kryzhko

1.9 Uklonenie ot alimentov (Russia) by Ekaterina Ivanova

1.10 Babushki (Russia) by Anna Shadrina

Bibliography to Chapter 1

2Growing up

Introduction: a psychological perspective on socialisation by Thomas Tsichtis

2.1 Les rallyes mondains (France) by Alexandre Lieure

2.2 Mianzi (China) by Long Zhang

2.3 Runs (Nigeria) by Olumuyiwa K. Ojo and Olusola Ayandele

2.4 Neijuan (China) by Haoxuan Mao

2.5 Słoiki (Poland) by Mathilde Ollivo

2.6 Pokhorony okurka (Russia and USSR) by Kirill Melnikov

2.7 Hikikomori (Japan) by Taiga Kambara

2.8 Gaser (Serbia and the Western Balkans) by Barbara Frey and Dragana Mrvoš

2.9 Lesboseksprosvet (Russia) by Polina Kislitsyna

2.10 New normal (Global) by Dmitry Kurnosov and Anna Varfolomeeva

Bibliography to Chapter 2

3Adjusting to the digital age

Introduction: digitally mediated (mis)trust by James Maguire and Kristoffer Albris

3.1 Shuahaoping (China) by Xiangyi Liao

3.2 Travel influencers (Global) by Eugénie Pereira Couttolenc

3.3 Follower buying (Global) by Christina Zimmermann

3.4 Ticket touting (Global) by Patricia Donovan

3.5 Doxing (Global) by James Morgan

3.6 Catfishing (Global) by Jade Jacobs

3.7 Revenge porn (Global) by Julia Schur

3.8 Telefon gap zadan (Tajikistan) by Swetlana Torno

Bibliography to Chapter 3

4Getting married

Introduction: marriage and informality by Péter Berta

4.1 Caili (China) by Ling Zhang

4.2 Ala kachuu (Kyrgyzstan) by Alberica Camerani

4.3 Mendanghudui (China) by Shiqi Yin

4.4 Nikoh (Tajikistan) by Madina Gazieva

4.5 Sdelat’ ZAGS (Tajik diaspora in Russia) by Elena Borisova

4.6 Bridezilla (UK, North America, Australia) by Julia Carter

4.7 Karmir khndzor (Armenia) by Anna Temkina and Lilit Zakaryan

4.8 Kelin (Central Asia) by Tommaso Aguzzi

4.9 Ernai (China) by Ouxiang Ji

4.10 Toqal/Tokal (Kazakhstan) by Nursultan Suleimenov

4.11 Burrnesha (Albania) by Ellen Robertson

Bibliography to Chapter 4

5Belonging and social exclusion

Introduction: gender, social exclusion and the dark side of informal networks by Sven Horak and Fadi Alsarhan

5.1 KhTsB (Armenia) by Armine Petrosyan

5.2 Pečenje rakije (Serbia) by Maria Vivod

5.3 Hemṣehricilik (Turkey) by Eda Pamuksuzer

5.4 Ahbap-çavuş ilişkisi (Turkey) by Semih Ergelen

5.5 Grypsowanie (Poland) by Piotr Majda

5.6 Meso (Cyprus and Greece) by George Hajipavli

5.7 Palanca (Mexico) by David Arellano-Gault and Luis Jair Trejo-Alonso

5.8 Kabel (Malaysia) by Christian Giordano

5.9 Fanju (China) by Lang Liu

5.10 Enchufismo (Spain) by Ignacio Fradejas-García

5.11 A molestar a otro lado (Guatemala) by Jose Godinez and Denise Dunlap

Bibliography to Chapter 5

6Alternative currencies of support

Introduction: sharing norms by Elodie Douarin

6.1 Znaki vnimaniya (Russia and FSU) by Conor Murray

6.2 Sinnamjai (Thailand) by Wasin Punthong and Attasit Pankaew

6.3 Joro (Kyrgyzstan) by Arzuu Sheranova

6.4 Sadaqa (Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan) by Aisalkyn Botoeva

6.5 Ashar (Kyrgyzstan) by Arzuu Sheranova

6.6 Nisia (Georgia) by Megi Kartsivadze

6.7 Cassa peota (Italy) by Giulio Benedetti

6.8 Chernaya kassa (Kyrgyzstan) by Arzuu Sheranova

6.9 Moai (Japan) by Abel Polese

6.10 Koshumcha (Kyrgyzstan) by Eugenia Pesci

6.11 Pujogǔm (South Korea) by You Kyung Byun

6.12 Poclon (Wallachia, Romania) by Vasile Mihai Olaru

Bibliography to Chapter 6

7Gaining an advantage

Introduction: trickster by Mark Lipovetsky

7.1 Chanchullo (Central America) by Denise Dunlap and Jose Godinez

7.2 Gorroneo (Spain and Hispanic America) by Ignacio Fradejas-García

7.3 (Za)chachmęcenie (Poland) by Alisa Musanovic

7.4 Nokofio (Ghana) by Dagna Rams

7.5 Chaa pani (India) by Ajeet Kaur

7.6 Duit kopi (Malaysia) by Christian Giordano

7.7 Aumento (Lowland South America) by Daniela Peluso

7.8 Pari pod masata (Bulgaria) by Kristina Tsabala

7.9 Otkat vizy (Russia) by Olga Tkach

Bibliography to Chapter 7

8Informal income

Introduction: informal economy by Colin C. Williams

8.1 Svart arbete (Sweden) by Lotta Björklund Larsen

8.2 Travail au noir (France) by Carla Montigny

8.3 Caporalato (Italy) by Francesco Bagnardi

8.4 Paga globale (Italy) by Giulio Benedetti

8.5 Shabashniki (USSR, Russia) by Nikolay Erofeev

8.6 Khaltura (USSR) by Taisiia Nahorna

8.7 Stacze kolejkowi (Poland) by Nikolaos Olma

8.8 Taksovanie (Uzbekistan) by Nikolaos Olma

8.9 Trotro (Ghana) by Jennifer Hart

8.10 Pfandsammeln (Germany) by Annika Kurze

8.11 Andare in giro (Italy) by Isabella Clough Marinaro

Bibliography to Chapter 8

9Becoming an entrepreneur

Introduction: entrepreneurship by Abel Polese

9.1 Combina (Israel) by Ina Kubbe

9.2 Manteros (Spain) by Horacio Espinosa

9.3 Tenderpreneur (South Africa) by Laurence Piper and Andrew Charman

9.4 Mzungu price (Kenya) by Yunqiao Xu

9.5 Churning (Canada) by Katie Kilroy-Marac

9.6 Double Irish (Ireland) by Julia Schmalz

9.7 Palyonka (Russia) by Zoya Kotelnikova

9.8 Mertvye dushi (Russian Federation, from 1991) by Ekaterina Vorobeva

9.9 Bin diwar/fazaee (Iraq and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq) by Hemn Namiq Jameel

Bibliography to Chapter 9

10Living on the edge

Introduction: triangulating ethnicity, networks and migration by Endre Sik

10.1 Vorovskie pasporta (Russia) by Andrey V. Gornostaev

10.2 Saksy (Poland) by Krzysztof Kruk

10.3 Ściągnąć (Poland) by Anne White

10.4 Trailing spouses (India) by Shalini Grover and Sanna Schliewe

10.5 Mulas (Cuba) by Concetta Russo

10.6 Simsar, samsara (Middle East and North Africa) by Alberica Camerani

10.7 Jak igrač (North Macedonia) by Borjan Gjuzelov

10.8 Nojukusha (Japan) by Hideo Aoki

10.9 La débrouille (Former French and Belgian colonies in sub-Saharan Africa) by Cécile B. Vigouroux

10.10 No. 8 wire (New Zealand) by Grace Reynolds

Bibliography to Chapter 10

11Settling in

Introduction: informal housing and beyond by Anthony Boanada- Fuchs and Vanessa Boanada Fuchs

11.1 Colonias (USA) by Michael J. Pisani

11.2 Chabolismo (Spain) by Noel A. Manzano Gómez

11.3 Samozakhvat (Kyrgyzstan) by Eliza Isabaeva

11.4 Zaniato (Abkhazia and Nagorno-Karabakh, Caucasus) by Andrea Peinhopf

11.5 Xiaochanquan (China) by Cinzia Losavio

11.6 Chu ồ ng c ọ p (Vietnam) by Francisco García Moro

11.7 Divlja gradnja (Countries of Former Yugoslavia) by Fynn-Morten Heckert

11.8 Vrtičkarstvo (Slovenia) by Petra Matijevic

11.9 Informal housing of the rich (Global) by Udo Grashoff

Bibliography to Chapter 11

12Engaging politically

Introduction: political participation by Uta Staiger

12.1 Voto di scambio (Italy) by Alberica Camerani

12.2 Vote buying/vote selling (Western Balkans) by Jovan Bliznakovski

12.3 Party soldiers (Western Balkans) by Jovan Bliznakovski

12.4 Maliks (Afghanistan) by Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili

12.5 Titushky (Ukraine) by Michal Pszyk

12.6 Krumpliosztás (Hungary) by Zsofia Stavri

12.7 Mungu idekh (Mongolia) by Marissa Smith

12.8 Parillada (Spanish-speaking Amazonia) by Daniela Peluso

12.9 Ne talasaj (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro) by Emina Ribo

Bibliography to Chapter 12

13Ageing power

Introduction: demystifying ageing and power by Gemma Carney and Mia Gray

13.1 OBON (Kyrgyzstan) by Elmira Satybaldieva

13.2 Jirga/shura (Afghanistan) by Madeleine O. Nosworthy

13.3 Aqsaqal (Kazakhstan) by Talshyn Tokyzhanova

13.4 Mullahs (Afghanistan) by Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili

13.5 Amakudari (Japan) by Hayato Moriyama

13.6 Jajmani (South Asia) by Soumya Mishra

13.7 Partiti (Corsica) by Paul Thomé

13.8 Caciquismo (Mexico) by Fausto Carbajal Glass

13.9 Maan tapa (Finland) by Simo Mannila

13.10 Duang muang (Thailand) by Akkharaphong Khamkhun, Pridi Banomyong and Wasin Punthong

13.11 Okkul’t (Russia) by Valeriy Solovey

Bibliography to Chapter 13

14Informal care and the end

Introduction: elderly care and ambivalence by Elena Zdravomyslova

14.1 Baksy (Kazakhstan) by Lyazzat Utesheva

14.2 Bajanje and vilarkas (Serbia and the Western Balkans) by Maria Vivod

14.3 Tchop (Caucasus) by Maria Vyatchina

14.4 Kako mati (Greece) by Eugenia Roussou

14.5 Marmotagem (Brazil) by Giovanna Capponi

14.6 ThetaHealing (USA, Russia) by Tatiana Loboda

14.7 Indulgence (Global) by Elena Denisova-Schmidt and Sibylle Krause

14.8 Ehsan (Azerbaijan) by Turkhan Sadigov

14.9 Pomeni (Moldova) by Gian Marco Moisé

14.10 Mingbi (China) by Yizhou Xu

Bibliography to Chapter 14

Concluding remarks: the Big Three and informality

Jan Nederveen Pieterse

Glossary

Index

List of figures

0.0.1Complexity at the crossing Korte Prinsengracht and Haarlemmerstraat, Amsterdam, Netherlands

0.1.1Transformation map of informality: from informality through migration to gender inequality

0.1.2Transformation map of informality: informal economies

0.1.3Transformation map of informality: urban informality

0.1.4Transformation map of informality: informal networks

1.4.1Diagram of a xiaoerni’s life

1.7.1‘Attention, owners of maternity capital certificates, I help in receiving funds.’

2.2.1The logogram for mianzi interpreted by the author

2.3.1One of many cheating techniques

3.4.1Ticket resale

3.4.2Ticket touting typologies

4.2.1Once they kidnapped me. Elzada’s story

4.2.2Once they kidnapped me. Nargiza’s story

4.6.1Sample wedding cakes at a national wedding show, UK

4.7.1An invitation to a feminist NGO performance

4.11.1Sworn virgin. 2016

5.1.1Survey results on KhTsB contacts used to access services

5.1.2KhTsB, illustration

5.2.1Home rakija distillation equipment, August 2019, Novi Sad, Serbia

5.5.1A diagram showing newcomers’ possible paths upon arrival in the cell

5.7.1Palanca (lever) in Mexico

5.9.1A wedding fanju in Nantong, Jiangsu, China

6.3.1A chaikhana in Osh, a typical public tea-serving space where joro gatherings take place

6.7.1Peota boats were used for leisure trips funded by the casse

6.8.1A laid dastorkon for chernaya kassa in Osh, Kyrgyzstan

6.11.1The front of a pujogǔm envelope, with the writing 祝結婚 (ch’ukkyŏrhon), meaning ‘wedding celebration’

7.7.1The transportation of illegal wood

7.9.1The practice of visa running

7.9.2Example of a bus fare list doing daily trips to Finland

8.7.1People lining up to buy paczki (filled doughnuts) in Warsaw, Poland

8.9.1Trotro on the road in Accra, Ghana

9.2.1Manteros carrying their packages on their backs, Barcelona, Spain

9.2.2Street art depicting a mantero, Barrio del Raval, Barcelona, Spain

9.4.1Masai Market, Nairobi, Kenya

10.1.1A counterfeit printed passport, 1752

11.1.1Colonia home in Hidalgo County, Texas, USA

11.2.1Chabolas, around 1960

11.2.2Chabolas in 1981

11.3.1Ak Zhar squatter settlement to the north of Bishkek

11.4.1Photo of zaniato in Shusha, Nagorno-Karabakh, where Armenians occupied houses of displaced Azeris after the war in the early 1990s

11.4.2Terrace of the abandoned restaurant Amra

11.5.1Small property rights housing on village residential plot in Zhuhai, Guangdong province

11.5.2An urban village in Guangzhou city core being swallowed up by urban encroachment, December 2016

11.6.1Khu thập thể Trung Tự. Hanoi, 2019

11.7.1Informal settlement Malo Brdo in the heart of Podgorica, Montenegro

11.8.1View of a housing estate in Ljubljana from vrtički

12.3.1Influence of political party membership on employment (opinion poll)

12.5.1Vadym Titushko charging at a photographer, Kyiv, 18 May 2013

13.2.1A Grand Jirga in Moqur, Afghanistan

13.7.1The isolated location of Corsican villages contributes greatly to a Corsican sense of identity and to the formation of partiti

13.10.1A duang tablet forecasts and enhances one’s duang

14.2.1Salivanje strave (‘melting the fear’)

14.2.2The fairy-seer Ivanka, in Kulma Topolnica, Eastern Serbia, April 2015

14.3.1The advertisement for tchop treatment on public transportation. Makhachkala, 2019

14.4.1A lay healer performing ksematiasma in northern Greece

14.9.1Built-in table and chairs in tombs

List of tables

4.1.1The changing pattern of the three main gifts

4.1.2Data on ‘bride price’ in rural areas

6.2.1Respondents’ rankings of the importance of sinnamjai

8.6.1Khaltura or shabashka? A comparison

11.0Informality ideas in various disciplines and discourses

13.5.1First amakudari posts in selected ministries and government agencies

Informal shortcuts at complex crossings: a preface

Alena Ledeneva

Founder of the Global Informality Project

In the post-apocalyptic scenario of Douglas Adams’ 1979 novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, one person escapes the destruction of Earth and struggles to explain to aliens what humanity was like. Other sci-fi civilisations may be more advanced, but they fail to understand us. It may be that they are missing the informal dimension that escapes official records and data monitoring but remains central for problem-solving in human life. This volume aims to fill that void.

Our journey to the world’s open secrets, unwritten rules and hidden practices starts at a crossroads in Amsterdam, a YouTube video of which has attracted millions of viewers (2018). The video captures the intricate way in which pedestrians, cyclists and car and truck drivers negotiate the right of way at a complex crossroads, which is a perfect metaphor for the invisibility, omnipresence and importance of unwritten rules on the one hand, and human cooperation on the other.

Figure 0.0.1 depicts both the complexity of the constraints that shape daily routines and the role of human contact in overcoming them, often without much awareness on the part of the participants. The metaphor of driving is a perfect example of interaction between culture-specific behaviours and universally accepted rules.

Figure 0.0.1 Complexity at the crossing Korte Prinsengracht and Haarlemmerstraat, Amsterdam, Netherlands. © Thomas Schlijper.

Humans are social animals. Yuval Harari emphasises the crucial role of cooperation in the rise of humans over other species (2011). Social cooperation has made us what we are. We are born connected to other people, and as we grow up we cooperate initially with family and friends, before gradually expanding our connections to our neighbourhood, school, town, country and the world. Just as cooperation is a profound part of our life story, it runs deep through our economies and societies. Routes of migration, maps of networks, directions of trade, mutual help and sharing access to resources, and economic and political activities presented in this volume are all aspects of human cooperation. Human cooperation is also a major source of meaning and happiness for human beings. The COVID-19 pandemic, as a natural experiment, showed that while digital technology allows people to cooperate productively from remote locations, it falls short of providing the experience that makes them mentally healthy and happy. Human beings need to be close to each other, to smile, to rub shoulders, to share a joke and to laugh at it together. The pandemic has proved that informality is essential for mental health, well-being, and happiness at individual and societal levels all over the world. Not surprisingly, during lockdown many companies and individuals tried, with limited success, to recreate informal gatherings online.

This volume continues the FRINGE series, which develops an innovative understanding of the significance of fringes and explores patterns of social and cultural complexity. The focus on elusive, taken-for-granted and banal practices of problem-solving or ‘ways of getting things done’ in this volume resumes the bottom-up approach undertaken in the first two volumes of The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality that started the series. The previous volumes identified such practices across the globe, charted the grey zones and blurred boundaries in the key domains of human cooperation – re-distribution, solidarity, market, domination – and distinguished four types of ambivalence essential for capturing practices resistant to articulation, visualisation and measurement.

The third volume adds a human touch, emotional ambivalence and the positionality angle to the story of social and cultural complexity. It explores how contexts create identities in terms of age, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, class and status and how the identities influence, and bias, one’s outlook on the world. In post-socialist Uzbekistan, for example, veiled tensions around car ownership, which is seen as an essential part of manhood, a token of coming-of-age for young men or even a prerequisite for marriage, result in women being excluded from the informal provision of taxi service (taksovanie). Adding such nuances highlights the implications of informality: the extensive time that men in Tashkent, and more widely in Central Asia, spend in garages leads to the emergence of a subculture that only serves to reinforce male sociability, male bonding and narratives of masculinity. Taksovanie gives men not only a certain amount of informal income, but also a degree of autonomy and freedom (see taksovanie, 8.8 in this volume; Sopranzetti 2017). Such informal practices emerge as a corollary of retreat of the state and austerity, when the state blanket has shrunk, even in the most developed economies.

The cluster of practices, within which taksovanie falls, offers a comparative look at underreported income in developing economies and the most developed European democracies (see svart arbete in Sweden, 8.1 and travail au noir in France, 8.2 in this volume). While identifying the underresearched practices in remote corners of the world, this collection of informal practices, clustered and viewed from a variety of perspectives in social sciences and area studies, reveals novel connecting points and patterns of human cooperation.

For a hitchhiker, the practices included in this volume unfold in the so-called ‘biographical approach’ that corresponds to the stages of experience in individual lives (Berger and Berger 1976). To this end, the journey begins with a chapter on birth, and proceeds with experiences of growing up, youth socialisation, marriage and mutual help, the world of work and migration, political participation, exercising rights and, finally, ageing, illness and dying. Each chapter opens with a conceptual introduction written from a particular disciplinary perspective that informs but also benefits from informality studies. The ambition overall is to frame informal problem-solving from the multi-disciplinary perspective and highlight the nuances of coping strategies from the participants’ point of view. So the story of informal problem-solving practices over the span of human life as narrated in this volume is also the story of human cooperation told from multiple angles and perspectives.

Such informal yet powerful problem-solving practices tend to escape articulation in official discourse but are often captured in the vernacular. The uniting principle of this collection of entries from over 70 countries and world regions is that they refer to practices circumventing formal constraints, captured in slang. Euphemisms for instrumental exchanges, and other informal shortcuts – that can be interpreted in terms of Wittgenstein’s language games and participants’ ability ‘to go on’ in a situation – are of particular interest since they not only serve the purpose of polite conversation but also highlight the necessity to embed, socialise and normalise instrumentality (Wittgenstein in Hamilton 2014). Vernaculars of informality, as Henig and Makovicky have argued, are essential for deception and self-deception, for adhering to the norms while playing them to one’s own advantage and for talking about morally reprehensible exchanges in terms of morally acceptable patterns of cover-up, such as sharing, tipping or charity (Henig and Makovicky 2017; Makovicky and Henig in Ledeneva et al. 2018; see also Chapter 5, Belonging and social exclusion and Chapter 6, Alternative currencies of support in this volume).

This volume allows one to travel across time and space, so any ‘hitchhiking’ reader can choose their own route to trace people’s challenges geographically and historically. The reader might like to take up the ‘budget’ option – practices used by the poor and underprivileged – the ‘weapons of the weak’ or strategies of survival, which are more commonly associated with informality studies. One can also travel in business class, as it were, and study informal ways to solve the problems of the wealthy and the powerful, such as strategies of tax optimisation, strategic migration or resort to traditional medicine and occult practices. For example, a well-to-do Chinese mother can give birth to an anchor baby in the United States with a long-term plan to educate her child there and obtain a US passport that would, prospectively, allow for family unification in the United States. In another example of problem-solving, Canadian middle-class women resort to the help of professional organisers to deal with the pressure of overwhelming possessions and churning. Each chapter closes with a detailed bibliography which frames the case studies, so that the reader may continue to study the informal practices, networks or institutions that sparked their interest, and place them in a global, and comparative, context.

If one pursues biographical logic, the next stop after birth is growing up, which is complicated in many corners of the world. You may be faced with the pressure of being a student in Nigeria, the stress of competition in Asia, the absurdity behind subordination in the Russian army, labelling and the general psychological trauma of being a teenager, all discussed in Chapter 2, where the pressure of, and resistance to, formal constraints go hand in hand with peer pressure.

Chapter 3 focuses on the digital age, whereby through experiencing bullying, catfishing or tinder swindling one learns not to trust the digital media world. To avoid the perils associated with being inexperienced, lonely, vulnerable or depressed, or unable to fall in love, one may find refuge in an arranged marriage. Following the West Balkans tradition of inheritance, there is an option for a woman to live her life as a man, thus remaining single and waiting for a male heir in the extended family to take over and ensure the continuation of the male inheritance line. This book’s journey through the world’s diversity of practices, customary in one place and travelling to other locations through diasporas, labour or forced migration, reveals the uniqueness of one’s own life, but also points out the patterns of cooperation characteristic of humanity overall, as illustrated in the chapters on informal networks, informal income and alternative currencies of support.

For a post-human hitchhiker, human life with its ageing, illnesses, anxiety and continuous problem-solving may look like a struggle, yet a struggle softened by a human touch, human emotion, human cooperation. This volume addresses the issues of emotional ambivalence, whereby the family, the people you love, intended to nurture and support you, are also the ones who can inflict the most pain. It emphasises the pressures of the digital age, intended to unite and integrate yet results in division and polarisation. The informal practices assembled here can teach the designers of the digital age how people really work and what they want in the aftermath of the pandemic-driven reflection period. The underlying patterns of informal practices in this volume demonstrate the urgency of alleviating tensions between continuity and all-too-rapid change and/or create shortcuts to tackle the central problem of modern societies: uncertainty (Bauman 2000; Rabinow and Samimian-Darash 2015).

Migration crises, the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, political divides, democracy backsliding and trends to improve life/work balance have created ‘a new normal’ associated with both a new high in uncertainty and misinformation and a new low in levels of fairness and inequality. People’s experiences of lockdown and related pandemic management measures varied enormously depending on their health, age and socioeconomic status. People suffering from a chronic disease faced reduced access to health care for non-COVID-19 conditions. The switch to online education put underprivileged students at a disadvantage. Children and adolescents with lower economic status or with a migration background and limited living space experienced significant challenges to their mental health. In addition, lockdown restrictions increased the risk of gender-based violence due to the mental effects of isolation and barriers to victim support (Kurnosov and Varfolomeeva 2020).

Maintaining mental health became a major challenge for human beings living in such contexts, as previously prevalent life strategies became redundant. The natural experiment caused by the pandemic lockdowns highlights the importance of informality in human life. The chapters on gaining advantage, informal income and entrepreneurship demonstrate how the paradox of uncertain, under-determined futures and standardised, over-determined regulatory frameworks is resolved through individually enacted and context-bound informal shortcuts, yet collectively recognised and documented in a context-free slang.

This volume opens a discussion on cyber informality and digital mistrust. Technologies based on blockchain algorithms, big data, internet platforms and cryptocurrencies have been imagined, designed and used as explicitly open-access spaces that obliterate the distinction between formal and informal to facilitate horizontal relations and to flatten formal hierarchies. The informality perspective on the study of boundary-crossing and boundary-creation, freedom and restraint, and crime and regulation in cyberspace offers interesting parallels with the dynamics of the formal and informal in human societies, and is yet to be researched. To this end, we could argue that any new technology will be associated with the emergence of new informal practices. One should also ask if artificial intelligence (AI) can generate informal shortcuts, or hacks, and whether and how it can be trained to recognise them (Schneier 2023). Finally, there is a need to develop theoretical frameworks that allow conceptualisation of the association between digital innovation and informal practices.

In its cross-disciplinary embrace, the perspective of informality studies in this volume overcomes fragmentation of local knowledge and invites verification and comparison without losing the context within which informal practices are embedded. This volume is a collective effort of open-minded researchers, which resulted in ‘network expertise’, an approach that merits a longer explanation and historical grounding. For the hitchhiker who is itching to start their journey, this is the time to check out the glossary in the end or go straight to Chapter 1. For the patient reader, I would like to explain the relevance of informality studies for the challenges of the twenty-first century in more detail and reflect on the ways in which network-based expertise relates to past methods of coping with the fragmentation of knowledge, the nineteenth-century encyclopaedists such as Diderot and Voltaire, and the idea of polymaths, as well as offer a summary of skills to equip an avid informality scholar.

Bibliography

Adams, D. N. 1979. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. New York: Harmony Books.

Bauman, Z. 2000. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Berger, P. L. and Berger, B. 1976. Sociology: A Biographical Approach. New York: Penguin Books.

Hale, H. E. 2019. ‘The Continuing Evolution of Russia’s Political System’. Developments in Russian Politics 9: 261–76.

Harari, Y. N. 2011. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. New York: Random House.

Hamilton, A. 2014. Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Wittgenstein and On Certainty. London: Routledge.

Henig, D. and Makovicky, N. 2017. Economies of Favour after Socialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kurnosov, D. and Varfolomeeva, A. 2020. ‘Constructing the Not-So-New Normal’. Anthropology in Action 27(2): 28–32.

Makovicky, N. and Henig, D. 2018. ‘Introduction: Vernaculars of Informality’. In The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality: Towards Understanding of Social and Cultural Complexity, Volumes 1–2, edited by A. Ledeneva et al., 125–8. London: UCL Press.

Marková, I. 2003. Dialogicality and Social Representations: The Dynamics of Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rabinow, P. and Samimian-Darash, L. 2015. Modes of Uncertainty: Anthropological Cases. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Sopranzetti, C. (ed.) 2018. Owners of the Map: Motorcycle Taxi Drivers, Mobility, and Politics in Bangkok. Oakland: University of California Press.

Schneier, B. 2023. A Hacker’s Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society’s Rules, and How to Bend Them Back. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

YouTube. 2018. ‘Unbelievably busy bicycle crossing in Amsterdam’. www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqQSwQLDIK8

Acknowledgements

We cannot express enough gratitude to our authors who have been patient and cooperative in the process of putting together this complex volume. Without them, the third volume or, indeed, the Global Informality Project overall, would not be possible. We have been honoured to benefit from the conceptual contributions to this volume by Péter Berta, Anthony and Vanessa Boanada Fuchs, Gemma Carney and Mia Gray, Elodie Douarin, Sven Horak and Fadi Alsarhan, Mark Lipovetsky, James Maguire and Kristoffer Albris, Jan Nederveen Pieterse, Abel Polese, Michele Rivkin-Fish, Endre Sik, Uta Staiger, Thomas Tsichtis, Colin C. Williams and Elena Zdravomyslova who have helped us to frame the empirical data on informal problem-solving around the globe from multiple disciplinary perspectives. My students on the Informal Practices in Post-communist Societies course at UCL School of Slavonic and Est European Studies (SSEES) over the years deserve our special gratitude for being such enthusiastic researchers. Their entries represent a significant share of this volume. Their expertise and insights into youth issues in the digitalised era have been invaluable for this collection. We are particularly indebted to the late Christian Giordano, Natsuko Oka, Phil Hanson and Elizabeth Teague who had been part of the success of this project and donated their time, expertise and editing skills to the encyclopaedia.

We are grateful to Abhinav Chugh of the World Economic Forum Strategic Insights and Contextual Intelligence team, who initiated the mapping of informality from the transformative perspective. Our authors Tommaso Aguzzi, Giulio Benedetti, Alberica Camerani, Alexandra Fernandes, Piotr Majda and Eugenia Pesci, fellows of the EC-funded MSCA-ITN project MARKETS, led by Abel Polese, have taken part in this initiative and explored other avenues of visualisation of informality. Talshyn Tokyzhanova has created the ChatGPT definition of informality as part of the 2023 MARKETS Global Informality Project workshop in Leuven. Madeline Nosworthy has helped improve the project website design (www.in-formality.com). Matthew Cooper at Simple by Design has kept the website hosted and upgraded.

We have mostly relied on the kindness of strangers who volunteered their expertise and time to contribute to the Global Informality Project Online Encyclopaedia, but this published volume has also benefited from synergy with the Horizon 2020 projects: ‘Closing the gap between formal and informal institutions in the Balkans’ (INFORM, Grant agreement No. 693537) and ‘Mapping uncertainties, challenges and future opportunities of emerging markets: informal barriers, business environments and future trends in Eastern Europe, The Caucasus and Central Asia’ (MARKETS, Grant agreement 861034). This explains the prevalence of entries from the Western Balkans and Central Asian countries of the former Soviet Union. Most PhD candidates in the MARKETS project attended the UCL research-led course on Informal Practices in Post-communist Societies and prepared entries for this volume. MSCA-ITN fellows Piotr Majda and Malika Toqmadi were involved in the editing process, together with Gian Marco Moisé and Petra Matijevic who managed and directed the Global Informality Project online. Piotr Majda led on the illustrations and designed the AI-generated cover for this volume.

The Paris Institute for Advanced Studies has been both a spiritual and spacial starting point of The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality. We are grateful for the Institute’s continued support of the project in various forms and the 2018 book launch at Quay d’Anjou, once a residence of Charles Baudelaire, himself a flaneur, the lonely wanderer of Parisian streets, almost a hitchhiker. We thank all our global ambassadors who helped with the global book launches of the first two volumes and created momentum for the third. We are grateful to hosting institutions in Basel, Belgrade, Berlin, Boston, Dar Salaam, Kyoto, Lund, Malatya, New York, Riga, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Stanford, Tokyo, Washington and many others for their hospitality and effort in promoting our work (www.in-formality.com/wiki/index.php?title=Project_events). Professors Anna Temkina and Elena Zdravomyslova at the Gender Studies Institute, European University at St. Petersburg, together with their students, helped generate the vision for this volume. The case on Network Leadership: Global Informality Project, prepared for INSEAD business school by Stanislav Shekshnia and Alexandra Matveeva, has been instructive for the development of the project, as it articulated the method, documented the progress and offered scenarios for the future.

Annie Jael Kwan, Denis Maksimov, Michal Murawski and Kasia Sobucka, the curators of the Palace of Ritual exhibition in Venice, integrated the theme of informality into their programme and added a performative dimension to the dissemination of the Global Informality Project findings. Brainstorming with Lucy Ash, Steve Titherington and Simon Pitts at BBC World Service, who became interested in how one accesses things money cannot buy, resulted in the idea of including ‘hitchhiker’s guide’ in the title of this volume.

We wish to thank all our colleagues at UCL SSEES who helped in their various ways. The late Philippa Hetherington (1981–2022) promoted a biopolitics angle and had planned to write a conceptual introduction for this volume. Peter Zusi and Michal Murawski at the FRINGE Centre supported students’ placement schemes for the project; Mukesh Hindocha, Lisa Walters and Shevanese Anderson facilitated FRINGE Centre activities and students’ volunteer activities. The UCL SSEES-Digital Humanities internship scheme that has been in operation since 2017 has helped us to keep the online database of new entries updated and improved. We thank Orla Delaney, Binxia Xu, Xi Cao and Oksana Walsh who supported the Online Encyclopaedia. The FRINGE Centre student volunteers Yvonne Preda and Charlotte Solomou helped with editing, Ouxiang Ji and Benny Mao were super-efficient in putting together the mammoth file for this third volume of the encyclopaedia, which incidentally has hit the Google Docs word ceiling. All visuals, copyright and access to online sources have been checked and double-checked by Piotr Majda and Malika Toqmadi; all links were valid as of 2 April 2023.

Last, but not least, we extend our deepest thanks to our UCL Press editor, Chris Penfold, who has been supportive of the project from the start. It was a pleasure to work with the UCL Press production team led by Jaimee Biggins, the copy editor Anna Paterson, the indexer Kim Stringer, the Newgen production team Helen Nicholson and Dawn Preston, and the designers who continue to make the FRINGE series look so smart.

The critical importance of the anonymous reviews commissioned by UCL Press and the peer reviewers within our own network of authors goes without saying. Without a critical eye, a cross-check of entries arriving at different times and from various locations, we would not have been able to put such a varied collection together.

On behalf of the editorial team, and also the authors, I would like to thank our respective families, who supported us but also suffered through this encyclopaedic endeavour during COVID-19. Special thanks go to baby Nina Sofia Woodgates, whose birth in 2020 inspired the structuring of this volume.

The raison d’etre of informality studies: an introduction

Alena Ledeneva

UCL, UK

The first reader of A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Informal Problem-Solving in Human Life, its anonymous reviewer, summed up the volume as follows:

Along with the first two volumes of The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, it sets the boundaries, rules and standards of what is shaping up to be the field of informality studies. These standards include a cross-disciplinary approach (which combines approaches and insights into political sciences, sociology, social anthropology, social psychology, organisational theory, behavioural economics, and other disciplines); the network expertise (which is a response to the problem produced by the contradictory tendencies of the growing volume and complexity of knowledge on the one hand, and scholars’ hyper-specialisation and the fragmentation of academic knowledge, on the other); a bottom-up perspective (that gives voice to the witnesses of informal practices in local contexts); the means of identification of informal practices (which often escape articulation in official discourse, but must have a name in the local jargon); focusing on ‘what works’ (rather than ‘what should work’ or the reasons why public policies ‘do not work’); context-sensitive comparisons (comparisons of similar informal practices from various parts of the world, which provide a generalization of knowledge without losing sight of the local context); and keeping in mind the ambivalence of informal practices (their substantive, functional, normative, and motivational ambivalence).

I will explain why these principles are central to informality studies and why informality plays such an important role in finding solutions to twenty-first-century problems.

1. The problem-oriented approach

The rapid deployment of the Internet and other digital technologies in the last two decades has amplified two conflicting trends which have been developing since the second half of the nineteenth century – knowledge fragmentation and the need for integration. As the depth and complexity of knowledge has been increasing exponentially, the specialisation of scholars has been increasing at a similar rate. Because of the fragmentation of academic knowledge, individual scholars are unable to tackle complex problems which require urgent solutions (Harari 2018; Keller 2022). One clear example of this is climate change, itself only a part of the sustainability problem, which requires a multitude of scientific perspectives as well as an understanding of societies and their foundational principle – human cooperation. In his 1948 article ‘Science and Complexity’, Warren Weaver stated:

These new problems [of complexity] … require science to make a third great advance, an advance that must be even greater than the nineteenth-century conquest of problems of simplicity or the twentieth-century victory over problems of disorganized complexity. Science must, over the next 50 years, learn to deal with these problems of organized complexity.

(1948: 540 quoted in Castellani 2014)

In order to achieve this:

an open learning environment would need to be created, where students could be introduced to new and innovative notions of complexity, critical thinking, data visualisation and modelling, as well as the challenges of mixed-methods, interdisciplinary teamwork, global complexity, and big data! In short, the social sciences would need to be ‘opened-up,’ as Weaver called for in 1948 …!

(Castellani 2014; see also Byrne and Callaghan 2014)

Three-quarters of a century later, we continue to call for social sciences to develop methodologies that capture contexts in order to resolve the ambivalence of informal practices and map their complexity. Using mixed methods, cross-disciplinary teamwork and institutional architecture as a means of bridging intellectual boundaries remains a challenge, even if one accepts the limitations of individual expertise.

According to the cultural historian Peter Burke, historically, the challenges scattered across different fields had been addressed by individuals with encyclopaedic knowledge, or polymaths, such as Da Vinci, Erasmus, Pascal, Newton, von Humboldt, Pareto and Keynes (Burke 2020: 2), but deepening specialisation and increasing complexity of knowledge have made them virtually impossible to overcome. Today’s scholars need to collaborate and overcome the limits of specialisation to reproduce a similar effect.

As early as the 1920s, top-down, institutional initiatives to facilitate collaboration between different fields of study led to the creation of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt and the Rockefeller Foundation programme for the social sciences (Jay 1973; Ruml 1930). In the 1920s and 1930s, leading US universities – Yale, Harvard, Chicago – attempted to unite professors from different fields. In the social sciences, extended departments, joint seminars and discussion groups were organised to enable collaboration and integration. In 1940, Chicago University set up a multidisciplinary Committee on Human Development that linked natural and social sciences (Burke 2020: 224). A new format for interdisciplinary research under which scholars from different fields worked, conversed and collaborated under one roof – the Institute of Advanced Studies – emerged in 1931 at Princeton University. It was adopted throughout the Western world in the 1960s, mostly due to support of interdisciplinary research by Western governments in the aftermath of the Second World War. In Burke’s view, ‘in the case of humanities and social sciences … the results of these initiatives were disappointing’ and many interdisciplinary research centres, interdisciplinary committees and educational programmes ceased to exist (Burke 2020: 228).

The so-called area studies, government-sponsored research collaboration initiatives, continue to this day. The School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) in London was founded in 1915. In the aftermath of World War II, the US administration, eager to learn about its rival the USSR, joined forces with private foundations in order to establish cross-disciplinary research centres dedicated to Soviet or Russian studies. Later on, similar institutions were created to study the Middle East, South-East Asia, China and Latin America, now focused on decolonising efforts to interrogate and transform the institutional, structural and epistemological legacies of colonialism (see for example, https://blogs.soas.ac.uk/decolonisingsoas/).

Area studies-based collaborations have also produced a new generation of problem-centred fields and programmes: development studies, studies of women and minorities, cultural studies, global studies, media studies, religious studies, post-colonial studies, cognitive studies, liminality studies and so on. These have evolved bottom-up in response to social issues, as opposed to the top-down efforts to promote cross-disciplinarity. According to Burke, the problem-solving focus has been much more productive. Development studies grounded in neo-institutional theory have led the way. One example of success is Elinor Ostrom’s project on governing the commons, which was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. The evidence compiled by Ostrom supported the theory that local communities are best at managing their own natural resources as they are the ones who use them, and she argued that the resources should be regulated at a local level, rather than a higher, centralised authority without a direct access to the resources. However, when bureaucracies adopt these results for their own use, the outcomes may differ significantly (Hart 2009). Urban studies ‘hold the record for the number of disciplines involved in its programs in different universities – anthropology, archaeology, architecture, economics, geography, history, literature, politics and sociology – held together by a concern with major urban problems such as poverty and violence’ (Burke 2020: 233). Due to the visibility of issues of informal settlements, urban studies takes the lead in research on informality and sets the policy agenda on urban development around the globe.

Similar to how formal institutions command more attention than informal ones on the subject of solving complex research problems, top-down institutional approaches to interdisciplinarity receive the most coverage. However, it has always been complemented and even preceded by bottom-up, informal ways to overcome the fragmentation of knowledge and enable collaborations between scholars from different fields. Burke describes ‘The Club’ established in London by Samuel Johnson and Joshua Reynolds in 1764 as an early example of such cross-fertilisation. Members of The Club who represented different professions met at a London tavern and discussed matters of shared interest. Similar informal groupings proliferated in London, Boston and many European cities towards the end of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, the most famous being the Vienna Circle; History of Ideas Club, Baltimore; Ratio Club, London; Parisian salons and the like (Burke 2020: 233).

Most informal groups had a limited life (from 5 to 15 years), included a small number of participants with different backgrounds and managed to make significant advances in understanding specific problems as opposed to producing breakthrough scientific discoveries. Their strengths lay in the strong motivation and cognitive diversity of the participants, as well as flexibility of interaction free from any formal constraints or obligations. Their weaknesses were limited resources, including time and lack of a specific research agenda or a need to deliver (the case of the off-the-record Bilderberg club, established in 1954, might be an exception here).

Both top-down and bottom-up efforts to facilitate some interdisciplinary collaboration demonstrate the potential of these groups as well as their limitations. Both require a unifying force that holds the participants together. The format of a high table at Oxbridge colleges generates cross-discipline discussions and exchange of perspectives. However, it is only when the researchers cooperate to address a specific problem that their collaboration becomes sustainable and produces remarkable outcomes (Burke 2020: 228). Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson argues that effective collaboration between professionals with diverse backgrounds takes place when they face a challenge that is equally important to all of them but cannot be resolved without others who have complementary skills and knowledge (Edmondson 2012). The ‘network expertise’ assembled within the Global Informality Project (GIP) somewhat matches Edmondson’s idea of ‘teaming’.

First, it would not be possible to assemble this global collection of informal practices without the collaboration of researchers across cultures, disciplines and methods. Hundreds of scholars from all over the globe, willing to capture, map and describe informal practices, were united by the challenge of shedding light on informality and its role in the world. Second, most informal practices of problem-solving described in this encyclopaedia are themselves based on the teaming principle – people face challenges which they are unable to overcome simply by relying on existing, top-down, formal mechanisms, so they turn to other people with whom they have no formal bonds but whose help is indispensable. By combining resources, they overcome the challenge and find a solution. Third, the ‘network expertise’ approach relies on the classics: the strength of the weak ties (Granovetter 1973), activated by the ‘network leadership’ (Shekshnia and Matveeva 2019a, 2019b). Finally, there are wider forces at play that sparked interest in informality studies in the search for alternative solutions to societal problems and sustainability. One example is the ‘Strategic interactive map of informality’, set in motion by the World Economic Forum (WEF) strategic intelligence team (WEF 2022).

2. From capturing to mapping informality

Visualisation of informal practices and their impact helps to accomplish what The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality attempts to achieve: to capture specific informal practices in a context-sensitive way, to map the patterns of informality around the world and to document the ambivalent impact of informal practices on people engaged in them, societies in which they take place, and global public goods (www.in-formality.com).

The critical role of informal practices as a means of solving problems that people face at various stages in their lives has been neglected for centuries. Most commonly, informality has been associated with its visible and measurable types: informal settlements and informal economy. However, the last two decades witnessed a successful effort to capture and map less visible practices. Social network analysis (SNA) has produced major breakthroughs (Butts 2008). This shift was also due to the qualitative research produced by a new generation of scholars who use mixed methods and innovative approaches to record less observable aspects of informality such as informal networks, informal governance, informal exchanges and informal currencies (Giordano and Hayoz 2013; Morris and Polese 2013; Henig and Makovicky 2017; Polese et al. 2022a).

A WEF strategic intelligence team working on strategic insights and contextual intelligence monitors forces that drive transformational change across economies, industries and systems. When approached to create an informal economy map, the GIP team sought to integratesocial and cultural complexity into strategic thinking, with a particular emphasis on those invisible and less measurable aspects of informality that make the latter so pervasive and omnipresent. In cooperation with doctoral students funded by the EC Marie-Curie innovative training network, and WEF tech specialists, six key constituents of informality were established (WEF 2022). Each one is associated with global issues and contexts, links to other interactive strategic maps and gets updated by new resources pulled by the AI algorithm. The interactive map comes to life when you select one of the six nodes. The blue lines in Figure 0.1.1 illustrate just one of the multiple tracks linking informality to the world’s strategic policy agenda.

Figure 0.1.1 Transformation map of informality: from informality through migration to gender inequality CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. © World Economic Forum Strategic Intelligence.

Let us examine the key issues traditionally associated with informality, starting with the informal economy, the area that perhaps has attracted the most attention (Morris 2019; Polese et al. 2019). Forming part of the national economy, the informal economy, however, escapes direct regulation and is not registered for tax purposes. According to Eurostat, the size of the informal economy ranges from 1 per cent of the whole economy in Norway to 28 per cent in Romania. Survey-based indices of the informal economy in emerging markets report much higher estimates of the share of shadow economies in the gross domestic product (GDP) (Putniņš and Sauka 2015; Polese et al. 2022b; see also Colin Williams’ conceptual introduction to Chapter 8 in this volume).

Like most informal practices, informal economic activities are ambivalent. On the one hand, they create value for entrepreneurs and additional goods and services for consumers, and they create jobs for employees and put otherwise idle resources to productive use. On the other hand, they lead to the loss of public revenue, which undermines the financing of social security systems and the sustainability of public finances and erodes public trust in formal institutions.

The strategic map links informal economies to economic progress, corruption, inequality, employment, sustainability and public finances, as depicted in Figure 0.1.2, while urban informality, perhaps counterintuitively, is related to real estate development business and civic participation, urbanisation and international security, migration and corporate governance (see Figure 0.1.3).

Figure 0.1.2 Transformation map of informality: informal economies. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. © World Economic Forum Strategic Intelligence.

Figure 0.1.3 Transformation map of informality: urban informality. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. © World Economic Forum Strategic Intelligence.

Urban informality embraces everyday tactics that people use to appropriate and claim space, cope with scarce resources and strategically bypass or bend official regulations. It can be readily observed in the form of unregulated occupation of public or private buildings (squatting), land grabbing, construction of buildings for residential and commercial purposes without permits, establishing of slums and shantytowns and the emergence of temporary, unregulated settlements as a result of the mass displacement of populations due to war or natural disasters (see typology in the introduction to Chapter 11). Informal settlements are not only a result of housing shortages; their formation can be a strategic choice made in response to the lack of affordable housing and access to employment opportunities in urban areas where employment opportunities tend to be concentrated. Colonias in the USA (see 11.1 in this volume), favelas in Brazil, slum cities in India and campamentos in Chile accommodate millions of people. Less visible, perhaps, is the informal housing of the rich (Pow 2017; Martínez and Chiodelli 2021).

The focus on informal networks in Figure 0.1.4 reveals the less obvious side of informality – the impact of personal connections on various aspects of human and social life. Whether it is about knowing the right person to find accommodation, arrange transport, release a package held at customs, or find a tutor, in many parts of the world connections are indispensable for getting things done. Connections are part and parcel of cooperation and solidarity, and their strength and quantity directly affect one’s quality of life. Strong connections guarantee better support and informal care as people are more likely to help those with whom they share a bond. Informal networks offer a sense of belonging and bonding ties that correlate with well-being and happiness, and even weaker connections serve as bridging ties. The networks channel social capital that serves to improve life chances and provide practical benefits to everyone involved, as captured in the entry about the reproduction of aristocrats in France (see les rallyes mondains, 2.1 in this volume), alongside the emotional benefits associated with friendship, security and happiness.

Figure 0.1.4 Transformation map of informality: informal networks. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. © World Economic Forum Strategic Intelligence.

However, a wealth of social capital can also have a negative effect by encouraging dependence on informal contacts and generating corrupt behaviour. Informal networks can restrict personal choice and have a ‘lock-in’ effect. Ultimately, individuals might feel trapped by the expectations of their connections. While insiders experience the burden of inclusion, outsiders feel deprived and excluded from access to resources and opportunities. As Chapter 5 on belonging and Chapter 7 on gaining advantage show, this duality also applies to informal social networks, which foster sociability and cohesion for insiders while excluding outsiders.

Interpreting the invisible part of the informal iceberg is not a straightforward undertaking. The focus on the invisible, unarticulated and immeasurable in informality studies concurs with the school of suspicion, associated with Paul Ricoeur’s famous analysis of the great ‘masters of suspicion’, each of whom came up with an idea of falseness of consciousness – Karl Marx (class interest), Sigmund Freud (sex) and Friedrich Nietzsche (will power) (Ricoeur 2008 [1970]; Coyne 2020). Informality studies seeks to relativise the intellectual rigidity and intrinsic biases of approaches based on formalisation, visibility, articulation and measurability. The strategic interactive maps of informality have made a step in this direction by complicating the picture of the world with evidence of informal shortcuts that pervade contemporary societies.

3. The drivers of informality studies

In embracing both the developing and developed world, informal studies complements the global studies agenda with a bottom-up perspective that gives a voice to participants in liminal spaces and grey zones – often an undervalued source of policy solutions (Marinaro 2022). Informality studies enables the bridging and bonding of scholars with area studies expertise from all over the globe, thus creating a platform to explore deep structures of collective existence and critical analysis of contextuality (Geertz 1990).

In the last two decades, scholars of post-communist societies have made a remarkable contribution to the field of informality (see Polese 2023 for a review). The relationship between informality and the state has been scrutinised: from the connivance of the state and exploitation of informal refuse collectors, carers of the elderly and other service providers, to turning a blind eye to activities parallel to the state or not worth regulating (see Pfandsammeln, 8.10 in this volume; Andare in giro, 8.11 in this volume; Babushki, 1.10 in this volume; Rivkin-Fish and Zdravomyslova introductions to Chapters 1 and 14 in this volume). Once a peripheral theme of informality, associated with area studies, post-communist regimes and underdeveloped economies, has become mainstream, as formalised policies aimed at better governance continued to fail. The black box of informal institutions has been unpacked, and informal networks, channelling social values and peer pressure to conform with them became part of the transformative policy agenda (North 1990; Ostrom 1998; Minbaeva et al. 2022). The disciplinary divide in studying informal institutions, networks and practices has been partially overcome by intense cross-discipline collaboration within large-scale projects, application of network expertise, surveys and comparative research (Ledeneva 2010; Morris and Polese 2013; Ledeneva et al. 2018).

Several factors have created a demand for deeper understanding of informality as part of the global intellectual agenda (Harari 2018). The failure of global governance vis-à-vis nation states led to countless crises – geopolitical, environmental, the COVID-19 pandemic, migration – and pushed for novel, non-bureaucratic ways to solve global problems. Critical reviews of hegemonic discourses – via decolonisation and woke culture – questioned the assumptions of the historical and social roles of formal institutions. The transformations of the twenty-first century – the crisis of liberal ideology, the omnipresence of the Internet, the emergence of a gig economy and AI-based services, the rise of social media and political polarisation – undermined the normative analyses that had previously sidelined informality as marginal and detrimental to the effectiveness of formal institutions and created a need to assess the role of the informal in the new context. A focus on resilience and the ability to deal with uncertainty changed the angle on informality from traditionally suspect or borderline corrupt, to the problem-solving potential in the context of the ‘new normal’ (Stuart et al. 2018). Here I elaborate on the three main factors driving researchers’ and practitioners’ interest in informality studies and the impact thereof.

Facing uncertainty

Unregulated migration, the COVID-19 pandemic, extreme weather, political polarisation, the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, energy shortages and wild fluctuations of major currencies are only the most recent crises that have put severe pressure on governments and created an unprecedented level of uncertainty that has become the salient characteristic of the contemporary world. Solutions grounded in economics, theory of probability and game theory, with their emphasis on human rationality, strong institutions (including international bodies like the United Nations [UN], North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO], World Trade Organization [WTO] and International Monetary Fund [IMF]), bilateral and multilateral treaties and negotiations, preventive risk identification and mitigation strategies have mostly failed to address the new challenges.

In order to make sense of realities that bypass traditional theoretical frames and resist institutions of global governance and integrate them into policy, scholars in economics, management and political science turned to behavioural economics,