In the 1970s, social scientists used the term “informal economy” to describe the economic survival strategies of many of the working poor in Third World cities. Now, both terminology and analysis are applied in the advanced, industrialized countries to the often proliferating variations in nonwage employment that have emerged during the world recession of the late 1970s and 1980s. In this article, social science's understanding of the relationship between the informal economy and socioeconomic development is traced back to the early nineteenth century. It is argued that this interest has tended to wax and wane according to the cycle of boom and slump in national and international economy alike. It is in this broader historical context that the policies and reality of small-scale informal economic activity in the Third World can best be elucidated.

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Until 2004, Portuguese spas were traditionally thought of as establishments in which noninvasive therapies based on naturally occurring sources of mineral water are provided under professional supervision. With the publication of the Decree-Law No. 142/2004, Portuguese legislation regulating spas changed quite dramatically: from that moment on, spa-owners, numbering some 40 establishments countrywide, were allowed to open up what had hitherto been a strictly health-orientated sector. Since then much has changed in the Portuguese mineral springs spa market: one of the main innovations has been the introduction of a large variety of services that may be termed 'wellness treatments' -therapies not strictly related to pre-existing health conditions. These are now being offered as a product range in their own right, along with traditional medical treatments, thus diversifying the services provided, with all based on the same highly therapeutic naturally occurring mineral water. Thus spa services are no longer just a health product but have also become a tourist attraction, thereby legally formalising something that, to a limited extent, had always been the case.With the change in the services offered, the typical customer profile has also modified significantly: users of today's spa facilities are younger (between 25 and 45 years of age) than in the past, from the middle-to middle-upper socioeconomic stratum, live in large urban centres, have a reasonably high level of education, and could be either male or female. Such clients often prefer making various short trips over the year to test out different destinations, and choose registered hotels with three or more stars for their stays. The changing client profile has forced firms to adapt the means they employ to establish a growing and loyal client base. Indeed, over the past five years, a large majority of Portuguese spa service providers have significantly upgraded not only their services and infrastructures, but also their use of internet sites. With these changes in mind, the study reported on here aimed to analyse the way such firms currently communicate with prospective clients using the web. The results of this study may offer both Portuguese spas and those in other locations the opportunity to further improve their dialogue with current and potential spa-goers.

This article offers a preliminary theoretical framework for an analysis of labour in urban Senegal. The writers' studies of petty commodity and commodity production in Dakar—arising from which they propose to analyse the process of class formation and the class position of various sections of the urban labour force—require at the outset an analysis of the dialectical relationship between the dominant capitalist mode of production and the subordinate formsof production in underdeveloped countries. The term formof production is deliberate. Modeof production seems to the writers inappropriate, since it refers essentially to a totality which is self‐sufficient at both the superstructural level and at the economic base. Forms of production exist at the margins of the capitalist mode of production, but are nevertheless integrated into and subordinate to it. This article sets out to examine the processes and relations of production which characterise certain subordinate forms of production.

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