Rui Ramos | Lancaster University (original) (raw)

Papers by Rui Ramos

Information Technology for Development, 2022

Informal street trade has historically been seen by local authorities as backward, inefficient, a... more Informal street trade has historically been seen by local authorities as backward, inefficient, and detrimental to urban areas and thus, has been subject to formalization policies. This paper reports on an ethnographic study of a project that sought to formalize street trade in Recife (Brazil). Street trade was presented by the City Council as hindering urban mobility, unhygienic and detrimental to the development of the city. A spreadsheet was developed to record, license and enforce the formalization of street trade. The spreadsheet and its classification scheme expanded the possibilities of control over individual street vendors. We will argue that formalization requires street traders to be rendered objects and subjects of knowledge. What this does is to individualize and discipline street trade. More substantially, we argue that the regulations and classification scheme shaped understandings of street trade as becoming individualized and this led to some contradictory implications for urban street trade.

This paper draws from work-in-progress research focusing on the piracy of digitized music within ... more This paper draws from work-in-progress research focusing on the piracy of digitized music within informal markets in the global south. We consider this topic with reference to empirical data garnered from an ethnographic study of informal media markets in Recife, Brazil. These markets are composed of piracy hawkers – street sellers with piracy stalls equipped with CD/DVD player, car battery and speakers, who walk the streets playing and selling copied digital media, particularly, locally produced music. Overall we seek to explore how these alternative means of production, distribution and consumption of locally produced content enable engagement with local culture and, through this, preserve their cultural ‘distinct-ness’ within the global south. We draw on Deleuze and Guattari (1987) assemblage theory and argue that these piracy stalls are part of complex urban arrangements which enact and extend the circulation and consumption of local music by means of local product and service c...

Lancaster University, 2020

Informal urban street trade is a prevalent feature across the Global South where much of the prod... more Informal urban street trade is a prevalent feature across the Global South where much of the production and/or buying and selling of goods and services is unregulated. For this reason, local authorities have historically seen it as backward, inefficient and detrimental to the development of urban areas and have thus developed formalisation programmes aimed to control and ultimately make it disappear. Critics argue that the design and implementation of these programmes can marginalise and disempower informal traders as it acts against the traders’ livelihoods and long-established practices they have developed for decades. This research speaks to these concerns and aims to investigate how informal urban street trade manages to continuously reproduce itself despite formalising efforts to make it vanish. The study follows a post-structuralist approach informed by post-development sensibilities (Escobar, 2011). The purpose is two-fold. First, to critically investigate the implications of imposed power-knowledge essentialism inherent to formalisation processes (Foucault, 1980). Second, to analyse the ways in which cultural and socioeconomic development is enacted through the daily assembling of informal urban street trade (Farías and Bender, 2012; McFarlane, 2011).

The research offers a thick ethnographic inquiry, conducted over a one year-long period (2014-2015) in the urban centre of Recife, Northeast capital of Pernambuco state, Brazil. Recife is a particularly rich site to investigate these issues as informal urban street trade has historically been pervasive of its squares and streets and the municipally has in place a formalisation programme aimed to gather information about traders, license them and relocate them into purposefully-built facilities. The ethnographic inquiry focused on the practices, knowledges, materials and technologies associated with the daily work of both informal traders, selling on the streets, and governing officials implementing the formalisation programme, both on the streets and on the City Council office. Primary data collection was gathered through ethnographic observations and fieldnote diaries enriched with pictures and audio recordings of the day-to-day sensorial experience of informal urban street trade. This was enhanced with informal conversations as well as semi-structured and unstructured interviews with governing bodies’ officials, licenced and unlicensed street traders, formal shop owners, and a diversified set of urban citizens.

The thesis highlights that formalisation, through the introduction of regulations, classification schemes and practices of classifying traders through an information system, seeks to establish and expand an individualistic developmentality among all actors. Through this, formalisation aims to shape and normalise their everyday practices to focus on the City Council’s agenda of rendering informal street trade as problematic and turning the solution of formalised trade not only unquestionable, but desirable by all. More problematically, the formalisation programme’s overdetermination of what a socioeconomic order is to be and its imposition of individualising subjectivities to assist in its implementation acts against the traders’ collective and community-based understanding of work and livelihoods which, contrary to the formalisation discourse, greatly benefit the cultural and socioeconomic development of these communities. This is achieved through the traders’ daily assembling of work, value and supply on the streets. The findings reveal that the collective organisation of traders’ work is strongly based on a ‘cooperative ethos’ that is not only efficient in taking advantage of and adapting to the challenging conditions of street markets, but also is key on the ongoing fostering and strengthening of the local community identity. The findings also show that traders, through their tacit knowledge of the best fits between products, services and sites, are key in shaping the valuation of both formal and informal enterprises as well as urban sites thus bolstering the local economy. Lastly, the findings also reveal that, through their interactions with formal and informal supply circuits, street traders are fundamental for the distribution and promotion of local artists and producers thus helping on the support and fostering of local culture.

The main contribution of this research is it offers novel empirical and theoretical insights on the ways in which formalisation and informality are performed. It richly reveals the contested nature of development that is negotiated daily between the individualist developmentality imposed by formalisation and the communitarian- based development possibilities which are enacted through informal trading practices. These developmental possibilities are turned invisible by formalisation as classification enforces a strong reading of street trade which is ontologically distant and even contrary to the community-based values which make street trade not only resilient to formalising efforts but also adaptive to the challenging conditions and, more importantly, central to the cultural and socioeconomic development of these communities.

Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Social Implications of Computers in Developing Countries, Negombo, Sri Lanka, May 2015 - p. 643-653. 11 p., May 2015

The purpose of this paper is to consider the role of ICT within the formalisation programme put f... more The purpose of this paper is to consider the role of ICT within the formalisation programme put forward by Recife’s City Council to regulate the informal trade that pervades the city’s popular squares and streets. This formalisation takes shape by issuing formal licenses to give informal workers ‘permission’ to sell pre-determined items at specific sites. Drawing on Foucault we will argue that ICT is a formalising technology, which serves this formalising regime to control, discipline and survey informal traders. We will argue that the technology’s disciplinary intent was shaped by: a) the ways by which the socio-political context, rather than a technical rationality, affected how both control and surveillance were performed and disciplinary decisions were enacted; b) how its appropriation by licensed workers facilitated the reach of the regime’s surveillance but in some cases also sabotaged the programme’s disciplinary intents, c) how the information system reinforced the marginalization of informal workers and strengthened the position of the municipality.

Proceedings of 24th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), İstanbul, Turkey, June 2016, 2016

This paper draws from work-in-progress research focusing on the piracy of digitized music within ... more This paper draws from work-in-progress research focusing on the piracy of digitized music within informal markets in the global south. We consider this topic with reference to empirical data garnered from an ethnographic study of informal media markets in Recife, Brazil. These markets are composed of piracy hawkers – street sellers with piracy stalls equipped with CD/DVD player, car battery and speakers, who walk the streets playing and selling copied digital media, particularly, locally produced music. Overall we seek to explore how these alternative means of production, distribution and consumption of locally produced content enable engagement with local culture and, through this, preserve their cultural 'distinct-ness' within the global south. We draw on Deleuze and Guattari (1987) assemblage theory and argue that these piracy stalls are part of complex urban arrangements which enact and extend the circulation and consumption of local music by means of local product and service curation, and through market scaling. Thus, they preserve and emphasize cultural 'difference' through digitized music. The findings reported here are based on ongoing analysis.

Proceedings of the 6th Conference on Latin American and European Organization Studies (LAEMOS), Viña del Mar, Chile, April 2016. Wiley 15, 2016

The purpose of this paper is to consider how valuation is performed within informal markets in th... more The purpose of this paper is to consider how valuation is performed within informal markets in the global south. Specifically, the paper addresses this topic with reference to empirical data garnered from an ethnographic study of urban piracy markets in Recife, Brazil. These markets are composed of piracy hawkers-street sellers using mobile piracy stalls equipped with a CD player, car battery and speakers, who walk the streets playing and selling copied CDs. Overall we seek to explain how the evaluation of music media products is entangled with the informal urban assemblages of piracy markets. We draw on Science and Technology Studies (STS) literature on assemblages and specifically moments of valuation (Antal et al 2015) and argue that the valuation of music media is spatially and temporally located and collectively performed as a contingent process that takes place within the informal assemblages of people, materials and technologies which daily emerge on the crowded sidewalks. In this context, valuation is collectively enacted and the dissonance in relation to new musical products is collectively negotiated trough the inscription of sonorous boundaries of belonging and difference that shape the spatiality and collective identity of urban daily life in Recife.

Information Technology for Development, 2022

Informal street trade has historically been seen by local authorities as backward, inefficient, a... more Informal street trade has historically been seen by local authorities as backward, inefficient, and detrimental to urban areas and thus, has been subject to formalization policies. This paper reports on an ethnographic study of a project that sought to formalize street trade in Recife (Brazil). Street trade was presented by the City Council as hindering urban mobility, unhygienic and detrimental to the development of the city. A spreadsheet was developed to record, license and enforce the formalization of street trade. The spreadsheet and its classification scheme expanded the possibilities of control over individual street vendors. We will argue that formalization requires street traders to be rendered objects and subjects of knowledge. What this does is to individualize and discipline street trade. More substantially, we argue that the regulations and classification scheme shaped understandings of street trade as becoming individualized and this led to some contradictory implications for urban street trade.

This paper draws from work-in-progress research focusing on the piracy of digitized music within ... more This paper draws from work-in-progress research focusing on the piracy of digitized music within informal markets in the global south. We consider this topic with reference to empirical data garnered from an ethnographic study of informal media markets in Recife, Brazil. These markets are composed of piracy hawkers – street sellers with piracy stalls equipped with CD/DVD player, car battery and speakers, who walk the streets playing and selling copied digital media, particularly, locally produced music. Overall we seek to explore how these alternative means of production, distribution and consumption of locally produced content enable engagement with local culture and, through this, preserve their cultural ‘distinct-ness’ within the global south. We draw on Deleuze and Guattari (1987) assemblage theory and argue that these piracy stalls are part of complex urban arrangements which enact and extend the circulation and consumption of local music by means of local product and service c...

Lancaster University, 2020

Informal urban street trade is a prevalent feature across the Global South where much of the prod... more Informal urban street trade is a prevalent feature across the Global South where much of the production and/or buying and selling of goods and services is unregulated. For this reason, local authorities have historically seen it as backward, inefficient and detrimental to the development of urban areas and have thus developed formalisation programmes aimed to control and ultimately make it disappear. Critics argue that the design and implementation of these programmes can marginalise and disempower informal traders as it acts against the traders’ livelihoods and long-established practices they have developed for decades. This research speaks to these concerns and aims to investigate how informal urban street trade manages to continuously reproduce itself despite formalising efforts to make it vanish. The study follows a post-structuralist approach informed by post-development sensibilities (Escobar, 2011). The purpose is two-fold. First, to critically investigate the implications of imposed power-knowledge essentialism inherent to formalisation processes (Foucault, 1980). Second, to analyse the ways in which cultural and socioeconomic development is enacted through the daily assembling of informal urban street trade (Farías and Bender, 2012; McFarlane, 2011).

The research offers a thick ethnographic inquiry, conducted over a one year-long period (2014-2015) in the urban centre of Recife, Northeast capital of Pernambuco state, Brazil. Recife is a particularly rich site to investigate these issues as informal urban street trade has historically been pervasive of its squares and streets and the municipally has in place a formalisation programme aimed to gather information about traders, license them and relocate them into purposefully-built facilities. The ethnographic inquiry focused on the practices, knowledges, materials and technologies associated with the daily work of both informal traders, selling on the streets, and governing officials implementing the formalisation programme, both on the streets and on the City Council office. Primary data collection was gathered through ethnographic observations and fieldnote diaries enriched with pictures and audio recordings of the day-to-day sensorial experience of informal urban street trade. This was enhanced with informal conversations as well as semi-structured and unstructured interviews with governing bodies’ officials, licenced and unlicensed street traders, formal shop owners, and a diversified set of urban citizens.

The thesis highlights that formalisation, through the introduction of regulations, classification schemes and practices of classifying traders through an information system, seeks to establish and expand an individualistic developmentality among all actors. Through this, formalisation aims to shape and normalise their everyday practices to focus on the City Council’s agenda of rendering informal street trade as problematic and turning the solution of formalised trade not only unquestionable, but desirable by all. More problematically, the formalisation programme’s overdetermination of what a socioeconomic order is to be and its imposition of individualising subjectivities to assist in its implementation acts against the traders’ collective and community-based understanding of work and livelihoods which, contrary to the formalisation discourse, greatly benefit the cultural and socioeconomic development of these communities. This is achieved through the traders’ daily assembling of work, value and supply on the streets. The findings reveal that the collective organisation of traders’ work is strongly based on a ‘cooperative ethos’ that is not only efficient in taking advantage of and adapting to the challenging conditions of street markets, but also is key on the ongoing fostering and strengthening of the local community identity. The findings also show that traders, through their tacit knowledge of the best fits between products, services and sites, are key in shaping the valuation of both formal and informal enterprises as well as urban sites thus bolstering the local economy. Lastly, the findings also reveal that, through their interactions with formal and informal supply circuits, street traders are fundamental for the distribution and promotion of local artists and producers thus helping on the support and fostering of local culture.

The main contribution of this research is it offers novel empirical and theoretical insights on the ways in which formalisation and informality are performed. It richly reveals the contested nature of development that is negotiated daily between the individualist developmentality imposed by formalisation and the communitarian- based development possibilities which are enacted through informal trading practices. These developmental possibilities are turned invisible by formalisation as classification enforces a strong reading of street trade which is ontologically distant and even contrary to the community-based values which make street trade not only resilient to formalising efforts but also adaptive to the challenging conditions and, more importantly, central to the cultural and socioeconomic development of these communities.

Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Social Implications of Computers in Developing Countries, Negombo, Sri Lanka, May 2015 - p. 643-653. 11 p., May 2015

The purpose of this paper is to consider the role of ICT within the formalisation programme put f... more The purpose of this paper is to consider the role of ICT within the formalisation programme put forward by Recife’s City Council to regulate the informal trade that pervades the city’s popular squares and streets. This formalisation takes shape by issuing formal licenses to give informal workers ‘permission’ to sell pre-determined items at specific sites. Drawing on Foucault we will argue that ICT is a formalising technology, which serves this formalising regime to control, discipline and survey informal traders. We will argue that the technology’s disciplinary intent was shaped by: a) the ways by which the socio-political context, rather than a technical rationality, affected how both control and surveillance were performed and disciplinary decisions were enacted; b) how its appropriation by licensed workers facilitated the reach of the regime’s surveillance but in some cases also sabotaged the programme’s disciplinary intents, c) how the information system reinforced the marginalization of informal workers and strengthened the position of the municipality.

Proceedings of 24th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), İstanbul, Turkey, June 2016, 2016

This paper draws from work-in-progress research focusing on the piracy of digitized music within ... more This paper draws from work-in-progress research focusing on the piracy of digitized music within informal markets in the global south. We consider this topic with reference to empirical data garnered from an ethnographic study of informal media markets in Recife, Brazil. These markets are composed of piracy hawkers – street sellers with piracy stalls equipped with CD/DVD player, car battery and speakers, who walk the streets playing and selling copied digital media, particularly, locally produced music. Overall we seek to explore how these alternative means of production, distribution and consumption of locally produced content enable engagement with local culture and, through this, preserve their cultural 'distinct-ness' within the global south. We draw on Deleuze and Guattari (1987) assemblage theory and argue that these piracy stalls are part of complex urban arrangements which enact and extend the circulation and consumption of local music by means of local product and service curation, and through market scaling. Thus, they preserve and emphasize cultural 'difference' through digitized music. The findings reported here are based on ongoing analysis.

Proceedings of the 6th Conference on Latin American and European Organization Studies (LAEMOS), Viña del Mar, Chile, April 2016. Wiley 15, 2016

The purpose of this paper is to consider how valuation is performed within informal markets in th... more The purpose of this paper is to consider how valuation is performed within informal markets in the global south. Specifically, the paper addresses this topic with reference to empirical data garnered from an ethnographic study of urban piracy markets in Recife, Brazil. These markets are composed of piracy hawkers-street sellers using mobile piracy stalls equipped with a CD player, car battery and speakers, who walk the streets playing and selling copied CDs. Overall we seek to explain how the evaluation of music media products is entangled with the informal urban assemblages of piracy markets. We draw on Science and Technology Studies (STS) literature on assemblages and specifically moments of valuation (Antal et al 2015) and argue that the valuation of music media is spatially and temporally located and collectively performed as a contingent process that takes place within the informal assemblages of people, materials and technologies which daily emerge on the crowded sidewalks. In this context, valuation is collectively enacted and the dissonance in relation to new musical products is collectively negotiated trough the inscription of sonorous boundaries of belonging and difference that shape the spatiality and collective identity of urban daily life in Recife.