Difference between revisions of "Category:Functional ambivalence"

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===The functional ambivalence of informal strategies: supportive or subversive?===
Preface by Alena Ledeneva


'''Part Three''' discusses the blurring of boundaries between formal and informal economies, resulting in strategies termed ‘the system made me do it’ (Chapter 5) or ‘gaming the system’ (Chapter 6). These entries reveal the complex and often symbiotic relationship between formal constraints and informal behaviour. Survival strategies often compensate for the rigidity of state regulation, while strategies of gaming the system depend on compliance with it. The evidence presented here suggests, counterintuitively, that the informal sector is driven by regulations more than the formal is.
The entries in Part Three illustrate the functional ambivalence of informality – supportive of participants yet viewed as subversive by observers; subversive of formal constraints (such as geographical borders, shortages, all kinds of regulations) yet also supportive of them; bending the rules yet also complying with and reinforcing them. The blurred boundary between need and greed is the key theme and an underlying principle by which the material presented here is organised: from practices aimed at bare necessities to those driven by greed, ambition and passion to challenge the constraints. Other key themes in Part Three include the role of the state, the enabling power of constraints, and the sources of effectiveness of informal systems emerging in response to the over-controlling centre. 
'''Chapter 5''', The System Made Me Do It: Strategies of Survival, focuses on practices such as informal housing and welfare that are both subversive and supportive of political and socio-economic frameworks. In his [[The puzzles of informal economy|'''introduction''']], Colin Marx outlines the puzzles of informality, challenges common assumptions, and summarises 45 years of debate over the impact of the informal economy on growth, development, innovation, poverty and gender. The coping strategies described in the entries are often conceptualised as ‘everyday forms of resistance’ or ‘weapons of the weak,’ channelling resistance to existing constraints, thereby subverting but also supporting them. But these are not necessarily the strategies only of the dispossessed, lacking more direct forms of satisfying their needs. Where does need end and greed begin? When does evasion of domination become a form of manipulation? Is it possible to distinguish between supportive and subversive aspects of ‘functionally ambivalent’ practices and measure them? In his [[How do tools of evasion become instruments of exploitation|'''conclusion''']] to Chapter 5, Scott Radnitz maps for us the grey zones and offers insights into when evasion turns into manipulation, need into greed, and prey into predators.
The strategies of manipulation assembled in '''Chapter 6''', Gaming The System: Strategies of Camouflage, can often be seen by the participants as a forced choice, necessity or need (and therefore justified as restoring competitiveness rather than seeking competitive advantage). By outsiders, however, they are likely to be classified as bending the rules. In his [[Gaming the system by |'''introduction''']], Phil Hanson unmasks the dual functionality of informal practices, subversive to the system yet still supportive of formal frameworks, if only to exploit them further. From the minor forms of free-riding and under-the-radar cash practices, where rules are bent but in a socially acceptable way, the argument unfolds to embrace practices of creating fronts and façades to camouflage more serious forms of rule-bending. These include cover-ups by intermediaries (conceptualised as representative brokerage by David Jancsics), creative accounting and other forms of partial compliance, all the way up to the practices of enforcing the letter of the law in order to violate its spirit, and legislating for unfitting purpose. The latter deprives the formal/informal division of its sense: the formal law becomes an expression of informal interests.
Hanson identifies features of the Wittgenstein-inspired ‘family resemblance’ of gaming the system practices: the role of informal, sometimes illicit, intermediaries, the elements of wheeling and dealing, something requiring a certain skill, know-how and daring, and raises the question of the correspondence, or lack of it, between the values and beliefs underlying a society’s informal norms, on the one hand, and its formal institutions on the other. In his [[Methods of researching part-time crime and illicit economic activity|'''conclusion''']] to this chapter, Gerald Mars offers an adaptation of Mary Douglas’ cultural matrix to classify part-time crime, and links gaming the system strategies to specific work-related contexts and types of constraints shaped by informal norms and grid or group pressure. As these professional contexts are not country- or culture-specific, Mars reflects on the universal methods of inquiry into sensitive subjects.
The dynamics, represented by the functional ambivalence of informal practices and the identified pattern of turning the existing constraints to one’s advantage have important implications for policy-making. Producing more and more regulation enhances the enabling power of constraints for those playing them against the system. Questioning the constraints is the common theme of Part Three. It is implicit in most of the entries and explicit in the questions raised by Marx and Radnitz, who turn the tables against the wider ideological frames and systems of domination associated with market, capitalism and neoliberalism.

Revision as of 12:11, 3 January 2019

Pages in category "Functional ambivalence"

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