Deconstructing informality: Will the informal/formal dialectic ever end?

Abstract

The article by Brandon Finn titled ‘The structure of informality: The Zambian Copperbelt and the informal/formal dialectic' presents a discussion that, for me, needs to be had. I have always argued that some of these universally applied nomenclatures that have been used to label certain phenomena in the global South need revisiting. This is because they have been devised with a global North contextualization and do not adequately define the phenomena. Those seeking to define African informality most likely approach it from a Western context within which urbanization has evolved and developed to a level where systems and infrastructure work efficiently. My thinking on this issue is that ‘ what would happen if we stopped trying to force development of the Global South to fit into western stereotypes?’ There seems to be an expectation of global South urban development to follow in the footsteps of the West. Meanwhile the development of cities on the continent have taken a totally different trajectory from the textbook cases that we find ourselves trying to superimpose on the global South cities.