The “Native” Trader in the “Settler’s” Marketplace
The constant harassment of street vendors by police and business improvement districts is a classic example of decentralized despotism enforcing “customary” economic law. In Mamdani’s framework, vendors are the “native” traders operating on the fringes of the “settler’s” formal, regulated marketplace. They are tolerated only insofar as they are invisible and do not threaten established commercial interests. The arbitrary enforcement of permits and regulations is not about order, but about maintaining the economic hierarchy and disciplining a predominantly immigrant workforce. A Marxist analysis sees this as the criminalization of petty-bourgeois survival strategies in a capitalist system with no room for them. A feminist lens highlights the particular vulnerabilities of women vendors. The solution is not merely more permits, but the decriminalization of street vending and the creation of vendor-led unions and cooperatives with real power to negotiate for space and rights, challenging the property rights that privilege brick-and-mortar capital over human need.
