ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an outline of debates on the formal-informal divide by highlighting four central and emerging concerns that also serve to introduce the chapters in the volume. It describes the erratic nature of assaults by the state on more formalised markets. As Keck argues, food wholesalers in Dhaka try to achieve a minimum of tenure security for their activities by means of informal arrangements with power brokers of the urban arena. An alternative to the three readings of informal-formal above is Nezar AlSayyad's conceptualisation of informality as the negotiability of value. The formal-informal urban divide is an epistemological demarcation put to work in different ways and contexts, but there are four general ways in which the formal-informal divide is both conceived in urban and development debates, and often emerges through urban processes and practices.
