A feminist postempiricist study of approaches to the governance of urban 'informal' trade: Case studies of Nairobi and Durban.

摘要

The growth of the 'informal' sector has emerged as a salient dimension of contemporary urban political economies in the South. Kenya is no exception. Not only has the informal economy in Kenya experienced a dramatic expansion, it is estimated that over 70 percent of informal workers are female. In Kenya, the informal sector is known as the jua kali - literally the 'hot sun industries', signifying the oppressive conditions under which informal work takes place. However, there remain significant gaps in the literature on jua kali, particularly with respect to the substantive nature of feminized 'informal' work, occupations that also contain the highest concentrations of women workers. Consequently, there exists a critical gap in policy discourses about informal work: they remain disconnected from the realities and experiences of informal workers; rather, they are informed by market-driven, gendered and technocratic normative and analytical perspectives. From a feminist perspective, not only is it important to address these gaps, it is also critical to delineate an appropriate feminist methodology with which the analytical task is approached. This is what the dissertation sets out to do: drawing on the work of a growing number of postempiricists, it first develops a feminist postempiricist methodology and then applies it to the case of Nairobi. 'Postempiricism' is an epistemological orientation that seeks to systematically integrate the normative and empirical dimensions of policy, rather than the focus on purely technical outcomes characteristic in empiricist policy analysis. The postempiricist framework was applied to extensive field work conducted in Nairobi consisting of archival research; a survey of 327 vendors in 6 street markets; 19 key informant interviews; 12 semi-structured interviews; 1 focus group; 2 group interviews; and non-participant observation in one site. Further comparative insights were obtained from supplementary field work conducted in Durban. The analysis reveals, inter alia, that the postempiricist approach makes it possible (a) to identify the normative underpinnings of policy as the fundamental determinants of overall policy performance; and (b) to identify tools for feminist interventions in policy discourses about the informal economy - interventions which are premised on the situated knowledges of workers themselves.