My research is motivated by exploring how urban power, space, and the built environment are a terrain of negotiations, imaginaries, and contestations. These elements come together in my dissertation, Governing the Ungovernable? Street Vending in Chi
...MoreMy research is motivated by exploring how urban power, space, and the built environment are a terrain of negotiations, imaginaries, and contestations. These elements come together in my dissertation, Governing the Ungovernable? Street Vending in Chicago and Mumbai. The dissertation refutes enduring explanations of informality as unregulated, showing instead the ways that government can create and govern informalities. However, the dissertation also argues that informality is a political product. While it may be governed from above, it is also contested from below. The proposal submitted here elaborates on how informality is contested by street vendors, and how this can help us understand power and politics in the city, more generally.
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