ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the problems that motivate the study. It details how an initial empirical and political/policy problem that concerns the resilience of the informal economy in post-conflict Kosovo brings about a research problem, and leads to a theoretical point and subsequent reconceptualisation. The chapter presents the main tenets of the book’s rethinking of informality and resilience as it forms around the notion of constitutive effects of distinct yet interwoven areas of practice. As the chapter discusses, this involves a shift in what to look at when studying informal economies, as well as in how to do it. For the latter, the chapter proposes that an adoption and slight adaptation of Pierre Bourdieu’s power analytics, centred on the concept of ‘symbolic power’, offers a fruitful way forward. The chapter ends by outlining the structure and contributions of the book.
