091511_Informal_Vendor

Forming the Nexus of an ‘Informal Economy’ in Broadway’s Daylight

photographed in Manhattan, New York on July 30, 2011

The phenomenon of the informal economy is both deceivingly simple and extraordinarily complex, trivial in its everyday manifestations and capable of subverting the economic and political order of nations. We encounter it in our daily life in such simple activities as buying a cheap watch or a book from a street vendor, arranging for a handyman to do repair work at our home for cash, or hiring an immigrant woman to care for the children and clean the house while we are away. Such apparently trivial encounters may be dismissed as unworthy of attention until we realize that, in the aggregate, they cumulate into billions of dollars of unreported income and that the humble vendor or cleaning woman represents the end point of complex subcontracting, labor recruitment, and labor transportation chains. … We do not commonly realized that the clothing we wear, the restaurant meals we eat, and even the laptop computer we regularly use may have something to do with the informal economy.

Excerpted from The Handbook of Economic Sociology, edited by Neil J. Smelser and Richard Swedberg. Published by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 2005.

Resdiscovering Punta Francesa in Both the Mid-Nineteenth Century and in Modern Times

photographed in Cozumel, Mexico on April 26, 2008

Al fin, a las once del día comenzó a soplar la brisa. A las doce nos preguntó el patron si tocaríamos a tierra para comer, y a la una y media el viento a la cabeza era tan fuerte que nos vimos obligados a echar al ancla a sotavento de Punta Francesa, que forma una sola isla con Punta Mosquito. La isla no tiene nombre propio, y no es más que un banco de arenas cubierto de plantas marítimas, dejando un paso estrecho entre ella y la tierra firme, por medio del cual se puede navegar en canoas pequeñas. Nuestro anclaje quedaba enfrente del rancho de un pescador, única habitación que existía en la isla, construida en la forma de un wigwam de los indios del norte, techado de hojas de palma que llegaban hasta el suelo, con una abertura en cada extrimidad para dar libre curso a la corriente del aire; de manera que, mientras se encontraba uno a distancia de un paso de la puerta, se sentía un calor vehementísmo; lo mismo era entrar en el rancho que sentirse fresco y alivio. El pescador estaba meciéndose en su hamaca y un hermoso muchacho indio se ocupaba en hacer las tortillas, presentando ambos una bella pintura de la juventud y una vigorosa vejez.

Excerpted from Viaje a Yucatan 1841-1842 by John L. Stephens. Translation by Justo Sierra O’Reilly. Originally published as Incidents of Travel in Yucatan by Harper & Brothers, New York, 1843.