The gravities of the world are shifting. Supposed peripheries are moving centre stage, challenging not only the hegemony of the former West but the very system on which the established global order has been operating. Informal activities are at the core of this transformation, extending the reach of emergent economies into ever new areas. Once understood as a marginal phenomenon, they are rapidly becoming the key focus of future prospects. Currently, the conflict rages about the integration of these emerging markets into competing politico-economic power constellations. But informality is not just an economic issue. Informal markets are also places of intense social interaction, fostering cultures of different values and alternate relations. Here, not only monetary values circulate but questions of resource sustainability, cooperative decision making, and social cohesion come into play - issues that are gaining critical importance in times of crisis.^ The essays in the reader debate the scope of informality for generating economic, social and political change. From discussing the conceptual challenges behind the development of a new political economy based on the philosophical, legal, and social architecture of 'other markets' to exploring how changing global relations are already initiating new forms of urban practice, these analyses provide a thorough understanding of what is at stake in the new geography of Informal Market Worlds. With contributions by Teddy Cruz, Keith Hart, Jiang Jun, Lawrence Liang, MAP Office, Vyjayanthi Rao, Ananya Roy, Saskia Sassen, AbdouMaliq Simone, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Ignacio Valero, Matias Viegener, and others. The accompanying atlas brings together more than 80 case studies on the spatial and visual culture of informal markets from around the world.^ Sites range from street vending in Bangkok's 'red zones' and grasshopper traders in North Korean underground markets to Vietnamese markets on the Czech border and the 7km container market outside Odessa, from Tijuana's sprawling mercados sobreruedas and the cross-border trade between Haiti and the Dominican Republic to Guangshen counterfeit markets and micro-retailing in Lima. Together, these portraits produce a striking picture of newly emerging spatio-economic typologies of informal exchange and the ways they yield adaptations to the use of territorial, social and legal resources. In addition, innovative cartographic analyses of the transnational trajectories characterising these irregular economic and social forces provide multi-angle perspectives on these decisive yet still often overlooked global dynamics.
