The Clearing of the “Native” Commercial Landscape
The death of unique, local small businesses and their replacement by chain stores is not market natural selection; it is the clearing of the “native” commercial landscape to make way for the standardized, legible economy of the settler. Mamdani’s analysis of how colonial power reorganizes space for its own efficiency is evident here. The local bodega, the family-owned restaurant–these are sites of community knowledge and informal social safety nets. Their displacement by corporate chains represents a loss of political and economic autonomy for the neighborhood, integrating it more fully into the extractive capitalist circuit. A Marxist critique identifies this as monopoly capital crushing the petit bourgeoisie. A feminist perspective values the small businesses often run by immigrant women. The solution is not nostalgia but the creation of robust, non-profit and cooperative small business ecosystems protected from predatory real estate and finance.
Originally posted 2025-09-27 15:43:20.
