ABSTRACT
This introductory chapter discusses ways of seeing informal economic activity in the context of the emergence of neoliberalism as the dominant economic theory in the late twentieth century. It discusses the assumptions of dualist, structuralist and legalist perspectives on the informal sector and it points to how the neoliberal perspective on artisans as entrepreneurs came to dominate thinking. It places the 40-year investigation of artisans in Quito in its national context, pointing to four phases of national development that coincide with the stages of the empirical research. The methodology that was used to investigate the conservation and dissolution artisans of over the period of the research is introduced. The chapter also sets out the contents of the other chapters, where the artisans of the informal sector are placed in the context of changes in globalisation, the structure of the national economy, the configuration of social classes, and the distribution of power in society.
