. Street Economies in the Urban Global South. , SAR PRESS, 2013.

When a young fruit and vegetable vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire in Sidi Bouzid, a small city in central Tunisia, on December 17. 2010, he ignited demonstrations that helped topple the country's autocratic ruler (Fahim 2011). The volatility of the economy of the street helps explain his desperate act: he might have conducted business without a permit, city officials confiscated his goods, they even slapped him, and, meanwhile. his debt grew, making him unable to bribe officials to overlook his vend- ing. In fact, changing combinations of circumstances like these give street economies their ambiguous nature and complicate the explanatory power of worn-out analytical dichotomies like public-private, illegal-legal, and informal-formal.