A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Informal Problem-solving Around the World

Webinar

Join via this link: https://ucl.zoom.us/j/97700943990?pwd=MjdRRDhvWnU2YzdWKzQxNk5UYlp2dz09 
(ID: 977 0094 3990, passcode: 232638)
The link will be live from 09:00 AM London time, May 28, 2024 until 4pm. Dial-in Numbers are available here.

There will be two online sessions to accommodate different time zones, starting at 9am and 2pm London time (please check the World Clock on your phone for the local time) with the same link for both. You can attend the one that is more convenient for you, or both.

Book launch at the UCL SSEES

If you are in London and can attend in person, please register on the Eventbrite page.  

The in-person session will start at 4 pm London time, in the Masaryk Common room, 4^th floor, SSEES building, 16 Taviton St, London WC1H 0BW.

• 4.15 pm - A panel discussion of the third volume – with contributions by editors, Professor Eric Gordy and Lucy Ash
• 5.15 pm - Reception begins, wine and snacks will be provided. Students will be displaying their work on informality during the party.
• 6 pm - Speeches 
• 8 pm - End of the reception.

The FRINGE series is a platform for cross-disciplinary analysis and the development of ‘area studies without borders.’ FRINGE is an acronym standing for Fluidity, Resistance, Invisibility, Neutrality, Grey zones, and Elusiveness – categories fundamental to the Global Encyclopaedia of Informality (Feb 2024, UCL press).

Its third volume, A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Informal Problem-solving Around the World, continues to advance the central themes of the series – informality, human cooperation, local knowledge and global conjunctions, context-bound specifics and context-free universal patterns. This time, the journey into societies’ open secrets, unwritten rules and hidden practices is, quite literally, life-long: it starts with an ‘anchor baby’ strategically born in a certain jurisdiction and ends with the practices of digitalising death rituals in China. If a planetary hitchhiker visited Earth, this volume would be a perfect guide to informal problem-solving, or know-how, which networks’ insiders tend to use without sharing it with outsiders.

For this event, the editor-in-chief of the Encyclopaedia Alena Ledeneva will be in conversation with authors and critics of the volume in a truly global webinar (the list of speakers/time zones tbc), open to the public.