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This paper attempts to sort through the confusion of conflicting claims that have surrounded the East Village since its renaissance in the early 1980s. Just what is the aesthetic value and political significance of this scene? Are its artists the agents of gentrification, as some have argued, or are they merely its dupes and victims? Can the East Village be described as an epicenter of the new avant-garde or is it merely its endgame, a simulacrum cannily exploited for marketing purposes? How much of this latest Bohemia is the creation of the culture industry and how much is the expression of genuine revolt against the culture of late capitalism? And finally, to situate this phenomenon in the center of a contemporary heated debate, are these events surrounding the East Village an example of a pernicious anything-goes postmodernism or the confused but important strivings of nascent critical cultural forms? Despite the current fashionable tendency, present among even left cultural critics, to engage in one form, or another of East Village bashing a number of critical and progressive cultural practices are even today surviving in the neighborhood. It is for this reason that we have chosen to highlight the coexistence of disparate, often conflicting elements and forces that make up the cultural politics of the East Village.

Most research on the informal economy concentrates on how the informal economy operates at the international and regional levels along with the formal economy and the state. This article departs from current research on the informal economy by looking at how the informal economy operates within the lives of its participants. It considers how informal workers use informal work as both an economic and an identity resource. Informal workers create informal careers and informal work environments in accordance with financial and identity goals and needs. The intersection of informal work as an identity resource and as an economic resource creates a typology of informal market participation types. Among a group of self-employed workers in New York City's East Village neighborhood, four patterns of informal market participation emerge: Entrepreneur, Occupier, Avocationalist, and Allowance Seeker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]