Reflecting the broader ‘cultural turn' in retail studies, recent surveys of do-it-yourself (DIY) consumers have emphasised human agency rather than economic constraints when explaining their motives for purchasing DIY products. The aim of this paper however, is to evaluate critically this...

To evaluate critically whether under a market system, monetary exchange is always and everywhere based on profit-seeking behaviour, this article examines cash-in-hand work, a form of activity conventionally conceptualised as low paid employment heavily imbued with profit motivations on the part...

The starting point of this paper is that the shift from a producer to a consumer society necessitates that social exclusion is investigated not only in relation to production but also consumption. To do this, case study evidence from interviews with 350 households in rural England is reported....

With the cultural turn/s in urban studies, participation in alternative retail channels (i.e. informal and/or second-hand modes of goods acquisition) has been reconceptualised as motivated more by the search for fun, sociality, distinction, discernment, the spectacular and so forth rather than...

The use of personal connections to gain preferential access to goods and services and to circumvent formal procedures exists in all countries to varying degrees. In this paper, the aim is to critically evaluate the continuing widespread positive depiction of this practice as a form of friendly...

The aim of this article is to evaluate the prevalence and distribution in the European Union of a little discussed illegitimate employment practice whereby employers pay their formal employees both an official declared salary and an undeclared ‘envelope' wage so as to evade the full tax and...

Given that 60 per cent of the global workforce is in the informal sector, this article develops a typology that classifies economies according to, firstly, where different countries sit on a continuum of informalization and, secondly, the character of their informal sectors. This is then applied...

Over the past decade or so, two competing theoretical perspectives have arisen that explain participation in informal entrepreneurship as resulting from either too little or too much state intervention. To evaluate these competing explanations critically, the authors report on a 2012 UK survey...