Abstract

"Bootleg Modernization: Postcolonial Ghana, British Social Science, and the Origins of Informal-Sector Business, 1950–1970"

Sergio Infante, Yale University (sergio.infante@yale.edu)

Could one see economists or anthropologists as co-creators of a type of business activity? I consider the origins of the “informal sector” as a business category for an answer. This concept emerged, roughly fifty years ago, from debates between economists and anthropologists about how to measure and observe underemployment. Today, the policymaking discussions regarding informality tend to privilege narrowly economic perspectives. But that has not always been the case. Anthropologists and sociologists of entrepreneurship made several key contributions to the study of the “informal sector” and “informal economy.” This article revisits the concept’s origins in late-1960s Ghana. I discuss the work of well-known figures, such as the Caribbean economist W. Arthur Lewis and the British anthropologist Keith Hart, both of whom were grappling with the problems of Ghana’s post-independence economy. And I recover lesser-known writers, such as the economic anthropologist Polly Hill, whose studies of West African migrant entrepreneurs left a sizable imprint on the “informal sector” concept. Finally, I discuss some reasons why the study of informality centered on the United Kingdom’s former African colonies over the course of the 1970s. Based on oral history interviews and archival research, this essay traces the intellectual journey that led to the first publications on the most common form of small-scale business activity around the world today.