Evaluating the relationship between the formal and informal economy in Ghana : a case study of Koforidua in the Eastern Region (original) (raw)

This thesis re-evaluates the relationship between formal and informal work in third world cities. Until now, informal work has been theorised either as a residue (modernisation), by-product of contemporary capitalism conducted out of economic necessity (structuralism) or an alternative to formal work chosen due to either an overburdensome state (neo-liberalism) or for social, redistributive, resistance or identity reasons (post-structuralism). Keith Hart was the first scholar to use the concept of the "informal sector", which he employed to describe a large segment of the economy of Ghana during the 1970s. Following Hart's seminal work, there has been a continuous debate about the nature of the relationship between the informal and formal sector. This thesis returns to the birthplace of the concept and through a survey of the contemporary informal economy in' Koforidua it critically re-evaluates these various competing theories of the relationship between formal an...