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Poverty, Squatter Settlements and the Informal Sector:

Working Bibliography

Ashwani Vasishth         ashwani@csun.edu        [Last Update: March 22, 2006]

 

Ardeshir, Anjomani & Faizah Binti Ahmad.  1992.  “Squatter Settlement In Kuala Lumpur: Evaluation and Alternatives,”  Ekistics,  v59n354-355 (May/Jun-Jul/Aug 1992): 159-165.   [ Abstract: Squatter settlements in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia date back to the Japanese Occupation.  Alternatives and improvements to this lifestyle are discussed.]

Ayres, Ed.  1996.  “The Expanding Shadow Economy,” World Watch, v9n4 (Jul 1996): 10-23.   [Increasing globalization, increasing informal-sector.  Threat to civil society, opportunity to reform business practice.]

Bayat, Assef.  1997.  Street Politics: Poor People's Movements in Iran.  New York: Columbia University Press.

Bonine, Michael E.  (ed.).  1997.  Population, Poverty, and Politics in Middle East Cities.  Gainesville: University Press of Florida.   [Contents Population, poverty, and politics: contemporary Middle East cities in crisis / Michael E.  Bonine -- Urbanization and metropolitan municipal politics in Turkey / Metin Heper -- Ruptures in the evolution of the Middle Eastern city: Amman / Mohammad Al-Asad -- Urban conservation in the Old City of San'a / R.  Brooks Jeffery -- Responding to Middle Eastern urban poverty: the informal economy in Tunis / Richard A.  Lobban, Jr.  -- Devotion as distinction, piety as power: religious revival and the transformation of space in the illegal settlements of Tunis / Elizabeth Vasile -- Muscat: social segregation and comparative poverty in the expanding capital of an oil state / Fred Scholz -- The crowded metropolis: health and nutrition in Cairo / Osman M.  Galal and Gail G.  Harrison -- Population, poverty, and gender politics: motherhood pressures and marital crises in the lives of poor urban Egyptian women / Marcia C.  Inhorn -- Gender and health: abortion in urban Egypt / Sandra D.  Lane -- Urbanization and political instability in the Middle East / Kirk S.  Bowman and Jerrold D.  Green -- Urbanization, migration, and the politics of protest in Iran / Farhad Kazemi and Lisa Reynolds Wolfe -- Islam, Islamism, and urbanization in Sudan: contradictions and complementaries / John Obert Voll -- The new veiling and urban crisis: symbolic politics in Cairo / Arlene Elowe MacLeod -- Are cities in the Middle East sustainable? / Michael E.  Bonine.]

Bromley, Ray.  1988.  “Working in the Streets of Cali, Columbia: Survival Strategy, Necessity, or Unavoidable Evil?” 124-138 in Josef Gugler (ed.), Cities in the Developing World: Issues, Theory, and Policy.  New York: Oxford University Press.   [Categories and political economy characteristics of street occupations based on increasing competition, reducing cost of living, encouraging consumerism.  That, in the main, the informal sector is an asset and policies should support rather than repress.]

Castells, Manuel & Alejandro Portes.  1989.  “World Underneath: The Origins, Dynamics, and Effects of the Informal Economy,” 11-37 in Alejandro Portes & Manuel Castells & Lauren A.  Benton (eds.), The Informal Economy: Studies in Advanced and Less Developed Countries.  Baltimore, London: The Johns Hopkins University Press

Cesar Pino, Julio.  1997.  Sources On the History of Favelas In Rio de Janeiro,”  Latin American Research Review,  v32n3 (1997): 111(12).

Chambers, R.  1995.  “Poverty and Livelihoods: Whose Reality Counts?” Environment and Urbanization, v7n1 (1995): 173-204

Collmann, Jef.  1988.  Fringe-dwellers and Welfare: The Aboriginal Response To Bureaucracy.  St.  Lucia ; New York: University of Queensland Press ; Manchester, NH, USA: Distributed in the USA and Canada by University of Queensland Press.

Currie, L.  1976.  Taming the Megalopolis.  Oxford: Pergamon

Danesh, Abol H.  1987.  Rural Exodus & Squatter Settlements In the Third World: Case of Iran.  Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

de Jesus, Carolina Maria.  1962.  Child of the Dark: The Diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus.  New York: The New American Library.   [Powerful narrative of the everyday lives of the favelados, lived in monotony and hope.  Radical in that some reforms took place after its publication.]

Dinero, Steven C.  2005.  “Urban Informality: Transnational Perspectives from the Middle East, Latin America and South Asia,”.  Domes,  v14n2 (Fall 2005: 108+.   [Abstract:  "Part III: Transnational Interrogation," provides some interesting examples of the cross-border, "East/West" nature of informality in the global age.  In so doing, the volume seeks to dispel notions of informality as yet another synonym for "Third World," and that yet another synonym for "poor." Rather, the volume seeks to bring the issue of informality full circle by questioning if/how the privileged -- academics included -- act as agents of the "mythicization" ([Ananya Roy]'s word, p.  301) of informality, if they are somehow innocent, pure and undamaged? (p.  303) Indeed, this section gave me pause as well.  Am I, as a suburbanized East Coast U.S.  academician, not also guilty of romanticizing those who still manage to live life "off the grid"?  That said, one must question whether the increasing development of the informal economy (informal labor practices, informal/illegal production [knock-offs, pirating], informal markets), should be equated with the development of informal urban environments such as squatter settlements.  In so doing, the "illegitimacy" of these economic behaviors becomes conflated with the daily living spaces of millions of disenfranchised, "peripheral" peoples, suggesting that these living arrangements are equally "invalid" and/or "illegal."

Dunn, J.  1993.  Western Political Theory in the Face of the Future, 2nd ed.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Dwyer, D.J.  1974.  “Attitudes Towards Spontaneous Settlement in Third World Cities,” 204-218 in D.J.  Dwyer (ed.), The City in the Third World, New York, NY: Harper and Row Publishers.   [Wordy survey of conditions.  Mild critique Turnerís shelter strategies.  Nice discussion of Hong Kongís policies.]

Eames, Edwin & Judith Granich Goode.  1973.  “Material Deprivation: A Cross-Cultural View in Contemporary Developing Societies,” 94-156 in Edwin Eames & Judith Granich Goode, 1973, Urban Poverty in a Cross-Cultural Context.  New York, NY: Free Press

Epstein, David G.  1972.  “The Genesis and Function of Squatter Settlements in Brasilia,” 51-58 in Thomas Weaver and Douglas White (eds.) The Anthropology of Urban Environments, Society for Applied Anthropology Monograph No.  11.  Washington, DC: Society for Applied Anthropology

Fonseca, Claudia.  2002.  “Inequality Near and Far: Adoption As Seen from the Brazilian Favelas,”  Law & Society Review,  v36n2 (2002): 397-432.   [Abstract: Focusing on child circulation among the urban poor in Southern Brazil, this article considers the parallels and divergences between local practice, national legislation, and global policy involved in legal adoption.  Following a brief ethnographic account of child circulation among working-class families in Porto Alegre, Brazil, the analysis focuses on adocao a brasileira (clandestine adoption) as one of the ways in which the Brazilian poor bypass legal bureaucratic procedures in order to adjust the State apparatus to their needs.  Finally, the comparative analysis of Brazil and North America centers on the evolution of adoption law and policies.  Our approach highlights the variant experiences of family and legal consciousness according to class and national identity, while at the same time considering the political inequality implied in the hierarchization of different cultural repertoires.]

Gay, Robert.  1994.  Popular Organization and Democracy in Rio de Janeiro: A Tale of Two Favelas.  Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Gilbert, Alan & Joseph Gugler.  1992.  Cities, Poverty and Development: Urbanization in the Third World, 2nd ed.  Oxford: Oxford University Press

Gilbert, Alan.  2000.  “Financing Self-Help Housing: Evidence from Bogota, Colombia,” International Planning Studies, v5n2 (Jun 2000)165-190.   [Abstract: A priority for housing policy and most Third World countries is to channel credit to the poor.  Unfortunately, this has proved difficult to achieve as formal lending institutions are reluctant to lend to the poor.  This paper examines how formal lenders deal with self-help housing in Bogota, Colombia.  It also compares how housing construction or purchase is financed in 4 self-help settlements and in 2 formally constructed, low income estates in the city.  Finally, some ideas are presented about how housing finance for the poor might be improved.]

Goode, Judith G.  & Edwin Eames.  1996.  “An Anthropological Critique of the Culture of Poverty,” 405-417 in George Gmelch & Walter P.  Zenner (eds.), 1996, Urban Life: Readings in Urban Anthropology.  Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press

Goode, Judith G.  1972.  “Poverty and Urban Analysis,” Western Canadian Journal of Anthropology, v3n2 (1972-1973): 1-19.   [Reprinted in Press & Smith 1980: 374-391.]

Haq, M.  1995.  “The Vision and the Reality,” 26-33 in M.  Haq & R.  Jolly & P.  Streeten & K.  Haq (eds.), The United Nations and Bretton Woods Institutions: New Challenges for the Twenty-first Century.  London: Macmillan.

Hardoy, Jorge & David Satterthwaite.  1987.  “The Legal and the Illegal City,” 304-338 in Lloyd Rodwin (ed.), Shelter, Settlement, and Development.  Boston: Allen & Unwin. 

Hardoy, Jorge E & David Satterthwaite.  1995.  Squatter Citizen: Life In the Urban Third World.  London: Earthscan.

Harris, Richard.  1999.  “Slipping Through the Cracks: The Origins of Aided Self-Help Housing, 1918-53,”  Housing Studies,  v14n3 (May 1999):  281-309.   [Abstract: The history of aided self-help housing, that is, of housing built with state assistance by families for their own use, is largely unknown.  There is a widespread misapprehension that such a policy was first discussed and practised during the 1960s, in the context of the Third World.]

Harvey, David L.  & Michael H.  Reed.  1996.  “The Culture of Poverty: An Ideological Analysis,” Sociological Perspectives, v39n4 (1996): 465-495. 

Jacobsen, Kurt & Sayeed Hasan Khan & Alba Alexander.  2002.  “Building A Foundation: Poverty, Development, and Housing in Pakistan,”  Harvard International Review,  v23n4 (Winter 2002): 20-24.   [Abstract:  The ranks of the urban poor are rising in Third World countries.  Most families arriving in cities are pushed into squatter settlements, where they suffer from shoddy housing, thugs, discrimination, poor infrastructure, sparse health care, insecurity of property, and unspeakably poor sanitation.  More than one half of Asia's urban poor-over one billion people-live in squalid shantytowns.  While often seen as a spreading blight and an incurable nuisance, these vulnerable people can be transformed into a social boon.  If development experts in Pakistan are viewing the urban housing crisis with renewed optimism, Tasneem Ahmad Siddiqui, the savvy chief of the Sindh Katchi Abadi Authority (SKAA) in Pakistan, should be credited for assembling a realistic and humane policy.  The Sindh, which includes the cities of Hyderabad and Karachi, is the southernost of Pakistan's provinces.  A katchi abadi is a "temporary settlement," a euphemism for the local version of the slums mushrooming in Third World cities everywhere.  Nearly one half of Karachi's five million people live in illegal settlements, and it is the Herculean task of Siddiqui's agency to "regularize" as many katchi abadis as possible by providing legal titles, upgraded building materials, and basic urban services.]

Konadu-Agyemang, Kwadwo O.  1991.  “Reflections on the Absence of Squatter Settlements in West African Cities: The Case of Kumasi, Ghana,” Urban Studies, v28n1 (Feb 1991): 139-151. 

Lewis, Oscar.  1966.  “The Culture of Poverty,” Scientific American, v215n4 (Oct 1966): 19-25. 

Lloyd, Peter C.  1979.  Slums of Hope?: Shanty Towns of the Third World.  New York: St.  Martin's Press.

Lobo, Susan.  1982.  A House of My Own: Social Organization In the Squatter Settlements of Lima, Peru.  Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.

Loewenberg, Samuel.  2005.  “Tackling the Causes of Ill Health In Rio's Slums,”  The Lancet,  v365n9463 (Mar 12-Mar 18, 2005): 925-926.   [Abstract:  [Daniel Becker]'s programme allows the poor of the favelas "to get help where normally they wouldn't get it", says Len Duhl, a professor of public health and urban planning at the University of California at Berkeley, who has surveyed the CEDAPS projects several times.  Because of the lack of general health services in the favelas, "active participation of the community members is really important", he says.]

Lomnitz, Larissa A.  1977.  Networks and Marginality: Life In A Mexican Shantytown.  [Translated by Cinna Lomnitz ; foreword by Eric R.  Wolf]  New York: Academic Press

Luxner, Larry.  2000.  “Destination Favelas,”  Americas, v52n6 (Nov/Dec 2000): 4-5.   [Abstract: Tourists learn what life is like on the "other side" of Rio de Janeiro on tours of the favelas, or slums.  Tourists provide a source of income to the slum inhabitants, who sell souvenirs and handicrafts as well as receive part of the tour profits.]

Mangin, William.  1967.  “Squatter Settlements,” Scientific American, v217n4 (Oct 1962): 21-29.   [Excerpted in Press & Smith 1980: 362-369.]

Mayne, Alan James C.  1993.  The Imagined Slum: Newspaper Representation In Three Cities 1870-1914.  Leicester, UK; New York: Leicester University Press; Distributed in the U.S.  and Canada by St.  Martin's Press.   [The construction of “slum” stereotypes.]

Moser, C.  1995.  “Urban Social Policy and Poverty Reduction,” Environment and Urbanization, v7(1995):159-171. 

Moser, C., Herbert, A.  & Makonnen, R.  1993.  Urban Poverty in the Context of Structural Adjustment: Recent Evidence and Policy Responses.  TWP DP No.  4, Urban Development Division, World Bank, Washington, DC. 

Neuwirth, Robert.  2005.  Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World.  New York: Routledge.   [Contents Rio de Janeiro: city without titles -- Nairobi: the squatter control -- Mumbai: squatter class structure -- Istanbul: the promise of squatter self-government -- The 21st century medieval city -- Squatters in New York -- The Habitat fantasy -- Are squatters criminals? -- Proper squatters, improper property -- The cities of tomorrow.]

Nussbaum, Martha & Amartya Sen (eds).  1993.  The Quality of Life.  Oxford: Clarendon. 

Peattie, Lisa.  1987.  “Shelter, Development, and the Poor,” 263-280 in Lloyd Rodwin (ed.), Shelter, Settlement, and Development.  Boston: Allen & Unwin. 

Rakodi, C.  1995.  “Poverty Lines or Household Strategies? A Review of the Conceptual Issues in the Study of Urban Poverty,” Habitat International, v19 (1995): 407-426. 

Roy, Ananya & Nezar AlSayyad (eds.).  2004.  Urban Informality: Transnational Perspectives from the Middle East, Latin America, and South Asia  Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books.   [Contents Prologue/dialogue, Urban informality: crossing borders / Nezar AlSayyad and Ananya Roy -- Urban informality as a "new" way of life / Nezar AlSayyad -- Love in the time of enhanced capital flows: reflections on the links between liberalization and informality / Alan Gilbert -- Changing nature of the informal sector in Karachi due to global restructuring and liberalization, and its repercussions / Arif Hasan -- Globalization and the politics of the informals in the global South / Asef Bayat.  Marginality: from myth to reality in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, 1969-2002 / Janice E.  Perlman -- Gentlemen's city: urban informality in the Calcutta of New Communism / Ananya Roy -- Tilting at sphinxes: locating urban informality in Egyptian cities / Ahmed M.  Soliman -- Control, resistance, and informality: urban ethnocracy in Beer-Sheva, Israel / Oren Yiftachel and Haim Yakobi -- Informality of housing production at the urban-rural interface: the "not so strange case" of the Texas colonias / Peter M.  Ward -- Power, property, and poverty: why De Soto's "Mystery of Capital" cannot be solved / Ray Bromley.  Transnational trespassings: the geopolitics of urban informality / Ananya Roy.]

Roy, Ananya.  2005.  “Urban Informality: Toward an Epistemology of Planning,” Journal of the American Planning Association,  v71n2 (Spring 2005: 147-158.   [Abstract:  Many of the significant urban transformations of the new century are taking place in the developing world.  In particular, informality, once associated with poor squatter settlements, is now seen as a generalized mode of metropolitan urbanization.  This article focuses on urban informality to highlight the challenge of dealing with the "unplannable" - exceptions to the order of formal urbanization.  It argues that planners must learn to work with this state of exception.  Such policy epistologies are useful not only for "Third World" cities but also more generally for urban planning concerned with distributive justice.]

Ruthven, Orlanda.  2002.  “Money Mosaics: Financial Choice and Strategy In A West Delhi Squatter Settlement,”  Journal of International Development,  v14n2 (Mar 2002)249.   [Abstract:  This paper examines the financial services and devices used by dwellers of Kalibasti, a squatter settlement in West Delhi.  It discusses to what extent people ware able to put together effective money management strategies through available devices and to what extent we might perceive 'service' or 'product gaps' which point to where new or existing providers could step in.  It highlights the embeddedness of financial devices used by residents in wider kinds of relationships with relatives, co-residents, employers, 'patrons' and others.  The paper concludes that access to adequate services does not necessarily correspond with access to formal or semi-formal services as is often presented by micro-finance advocates.  Rather it reflects people's awareness, job and income security, and capacity to leverage personal networks, all of which contribute to the capability of squatter residents to make financial relations and services work for them.  The paper ends by making some tentative suggestions as to how our findings might be of interest to prospective microfinance providers in squatter settlements such as Kalibasti.]

Saglamer, Gulsun & Pelin Dursun.  1998.  “Applying Morphological Analysis To A Semi-Squatter Settlement In Istanbul,”  Ekistics,  v65n391-393 (Jul/Aug-Nov/Dec 1998): 272(11).   [Abstract: Squatters in developing countries provide an alternative solution to meeting the housing demands of the urban poor who have migrated to big urban areas.  Squatters build their houses illegally on land belonging to other parties, and represent a major problem for metropolitan areas because of their unplanned formations, yet provide an interesting point of reference for the planners who seek to find solutions to these people's housing problems by creating new environments.  Saglamer and Dursun examine the presence and impact of squatters in Istanbul, Turkey.]

Sanyal, Bishwapriya.  1988.  “The Urban Informal Sector Revisited: Some Notes on the Relevance of the Concept in the 1980s,” Third World Planning Review, v10n1 (Feb 1988): 65-83. 

Sassen, Saskia.  1994.  "The Informal Economy: Between New Developments and Old Regulations,” Yale Law Journal, v103n8 (Jun 1994): 2289-2304. 

Sethuraman, S.V.  1997.  Urban Poverty and the Informal Sector: A Critical Assissment of Current Strategies.  Development Policies Department, International Labour Organization: Geneva; United Nations Development Programme: New York.  <http://www.ilo.org/public/english/125polde/papers/urbpover.htm>   [This policy paper addresses the issue of raising incomes of workers in the informal sector.  The paper identifies a number of areas where both policies and action programmes can be improved.  More importantly it emphasizes the need to consider certain reforms and the creation of an enabling environment for the poor to help themselves.]

Smart, Alan.  2001.  “Unruly Places: Urban Governance and the Persistence of Illegality In Hong Kong's Urban Squatter Areas,”  American Anthropologist,  v103n1 (Mar 2001): 30-44.   [Abstract: Smart discusses unruly places where governments have less control than usual: Squatter settlements in Hong Kong.  Smart draws on documentary analysis and field research from 1982-85 and 1999-2000 to examine changes in the way that the government attempts to regulate these illegally occupied spaces and the ways in which interaction between administrative interventions and the responses of those living there makes the persistence of illegal occupation possible.]

Stewart, F.  1995.  Adjustment and Poverty: Options and Choices.  London: Routledge. 

Strassman, W.  Paul.  1982.  “Upgrading in Squatter Settlements: Test of a Marxist Hypothesis,”  Journal of Economic Issues,  v16n2: (Jun 1982): 515(9).

Tulchin, Joseph S.  (ed.).  1986.  Habitat, Health, and Development: A New Way of Looking At Cities In the Third World.  Boulder, CO: L.  Rienner.

UNEP.  1987.  Improving Environmental Health Conditions In Low-Income Settlements: A Community-Based Approach To Identifying Needs and Priorities.   [prepared under the joint sponsorship of the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Health Organization].  Geneva: The World Health Organization.

Van Der Hoeven, R.  & Anker, R.  (eds).  1994.  Poverty Monitoring: An International Concern.  New York: St Martin's Press. 

World Bank.  1990.  World Development Report: Poverty.  Washington, DC: World Bank. 

Wratten, E.  1995.  “Conceptualizing Urban Poverty,” Environment and Urbanization, v7 (1995): 1136. 

 

[Last Update: march 22, 2006]

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