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Department of Anthropology and Sociology (ANSO)
Academic year 2020-2021
Illicit Economies
ANSO112- Autumn - 6ECTS Schedule & Room
Course Description
The turn of the century augured a new era based on the rule of law and good governance. Despite the promises of declining underground activities and the integration of informal practices into the formal sector, illicit economies have become more prominent worldwide by taking advantage of technological developments, unhindered capital movements, and lax cross-border controls. From drug and gemstone contraband, counterfeiting or money laundering, new realms of the illicit have emerged, including bio-piracy, cybercrime, sophisticated financial and tax evasion, as well as heightened human and sex trafficking.
This seminar assesses the prevalence of informal and criminal spaces and flows in the global economy. Rather than framing illicit economies in strict opposition to lawful practices, or relying on categorizations that obscure key features of these economies, the course examines how illicit economies can emerge alongside, and at times in convergence with, regulated, lawful and formalized economies. How are underground spaces and practices organized and what are the effects of excluding or criminalizing these economies? How does the underground movement of people, capital, information and commodities reposition the limits of what is licit and illicit, formal and informal?
PROFESSORS Filipe Calvão
filipe.calvao@graduateinstitute.ch Office hours
ASSISTANT Purbasha Mazumdar
purbasha.mazumdar@graduateinstitute.ch Office hours
Syllabus
NB: This is a provisional version of the syllabus.
We will adopting a hybrid teaching method this semester, with online and in-class components. The goal is to ensure an environment that is conducive to learning, creates equal opportunities for students in the classroom and online, and offers dynamic pedagogical tools. The syllabus, teaching methods, and evaluation procedures will be adapted to reflect this novel approach.
Procedures, Assignments, Evaluation
Evaluation will be based on a variety of assignments and learning opportunities, including in-class and online exercises and short written essays, each designed to sharpen and develop your writing and research skills.
Completing the assigned readings and contributing to class discussions is a prerequisite to successfully attend this seminar. Absences should be communicated in advance by email and more than two unexcused absences will impact the final grade.
Bilingual policy: The Graduate Institute is a bilingual institution. Lectures will be held in English but participation in class and written assignments may be completed in French. If applicable, originals of the text or translations in French may be used.
Plagiarism constitutes a breach of academic integrity and will not be tolerated.
All written assignments should be sent electronically to the instructor. Specific deadlines and additional guidelines on each assignment will be provided in class.
a) Participation (30%)
In addition to informed contributions to class discussions, participation will be evaluated based on the following exercises:
i) Brief comments on the readings submitted on Moodle (no later than by midnight on the eve of each session, i.e. Tuesday night). Each student will be responsible for three submissions throughout the semester.
ii) Presentation. Students will be responsible for leading the discussion once in the
semester. The presentation is not meant to summarize the readings but adopt th e style of a “controversy.” Alternatively, you may select an illicit commodity or practice for your exposition (covered in the syllabus or not) and take on an historical contextualization or follow-the-thing” approach. For the latter option, please consult with the instructor beforehand.
b) Report brief (30%)
Each student will select an object, commodity, practice, or space relevant to illicit economies, either included in the syllabus or to be discussed with the professor .
The report brief should include a summary, a general background on the issue at hand, the state of research and public policy on the issue, and results or findings from your desk research.
c) Research proposal (40%)
This assignment should be written in the style of a research proposal: if you had or plan to research a given illicit economy, how would you go about it? What is the puzzle or problem about the site(s) of your research that warrants future investigation? What data is necessary, and how do you plan to collect and analyze it?
Schedule of sessions
Part I – Concepts and definitions
Week 2. September 23 – Licit and illicit, formal and informal
- Hart, Keith. 1973. “Informal Income Opportunities and Urban Employment in Ghana.” Journal of Modern African Studies 11:61–89.
- Schendel and Abraham. Illicit Flows and Criminal Things (“Introduction: The Making of Illicitness”
pp. 1-25)
- Comaroff, John L. and Jean Comaroff. 2006. Law and Disorder in the Postcolony (Introduction, pp.
1-56)
Suggested:
- Kelly and Shefner (ed.). Out of the Shadows. Political Action and Informal Economy in Latin America [Ch. 2 pp. 49-75, skim through introduction]
- Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis, Ravi Kanbur, and Elinor Ostrom (ed). 2006. Linking the Formal and Informal Economy. Concepts and Policies (“Beyond Formality and Informality”; “Bureaucratic Form and the Informal Economy”)
Week 3. September 30 – Economy at an awkward scale: Markets and actors
- Comaroff, Jean and John L. Comaroff. 1999. ‘Occult Economies and the Violence of Abstraction:
Notes from the South African Postcolony’, American Ethnologist 26(3): 279–301.
- Campbell, Howard. 2009. Drug War Zone: Frontline Dispatches from the Streets of El Paso and Juárez (Introduction)
- Nordstrom, C. 2007. Global Outlaws: Crime, Money, and Power in the Contemporary World (Preface, “Coconuts and cigarettes: some definitions”)
Suggested
- Ferrell, Jeff and Mark Hamm (ed.). 1998. Ethnography at the Edge: Crime, Deviance, and Field Research.
- Polanyi, K. 1957. “The Economy as Instituted Process.” in Polanyi, et al (ed.) Trade and Market in the Early Empires. Economies in History and Theory.
Part II – What’s organized about crime?
- [background reading: Naylor, R. T. Wages of Crime. “Mafias, Myths, and Markets”, pp. 13-43]
Week 4. October 7 – Regulation, Sovereignty, and Predation Invited guest speaker, Jatin Dua (TBC)
- Dua, Jatin. 2019. Captured at Sea: Piracy and Protection in the Indian Ocean (selections)
- Roitman, Janet. 2005. Fiscal Disobedience. An Anthropology of Economic Regulation in West Africa (introduction, ch. 1, 2, 7).
Suggested:
- Castells, M. 2010. The Information Age. End of Millennium (vol. III). “The perverse connection: the Global Criminal Economy”, pp. 171-214
- van Schendel, Willem. 2005. Illicit Flows and Criminal Things. States, Borders, and the Other side of Globalization (Spaces of Engagement. How Borderlands, Illegal Flows, and Territorial States
interlock, pp. 38-62)
- Chalfin, Brenda. 2010. Neoliberal Frontiers: an Ethnography of Sovereignty in West Africa (selections)
Week 5. October 14 – Criminalizing race and poverty
- Valentine, Bettylou. 1978. Hustling and Other Hard Work
- Venkatesh, Sudhir Alladi. 2006. Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor (selections)
- Wacquant, L. 2009. Punishing the Poor. The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity. (selections) - Ralph, Laurence. Renegade Dreams
Week 6. October 21 – Bribes and corruption
- Haller, Dieter, and Shore, Cris, (ed.) 2005. Corruption: Anthropological Perspectives (Introduction) - Muir, S. 2018. Rethinking the Anthropology of Corruption, Current Anthropology.
+ Choose one:
- Osburg, J. Anxious Wealth. Money and Morality Among China’s New Rich. (“Relationships are the law”: Elite Networks and Corruption in Contemporary China)
- Jauregui, B. Provisional Authority. Police, Order, and Security in India (ch. 2)
Suggested:
- Reno, W. 1995. Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leone.
- Jauregui, B. Provisional Authority. Police, Order, and Security in India (ch. 3)
Part III – Illicit economies
Week 7. October 28 – Ethno-Erotic Economies Invited guest speaker, George Paul Meiu [TBC]
- Meiu, George Paul. 2017. Sexuality, Money, and Belonging in Kenya (selections)
Suggested:
- Cheng, S. 2010. On the Move for Love. Migrant entertainers and the US military in South Korea (pp.
45-73)
Week 8. November 4 – Drugs Invited guest speaker, Dennis Rodgers
Readings:
- Grisaffi, T., (2014), "Can you get rich from the Bolivian Cocaine trade? Cocaine paste production in the Chapare", Andean Information Network, available online at: http://ain-bolivia.org/2014/03/can- you-get-rich-from-the-bolivian-cocaine-trade-cocaine-paste-production-in-the-chapare/
- Rodgers, D., (2018), "Drug booms and busts: poverty and prosperity in a Nicaraguan narco-barrio", Third World Quarterly, 39(2): 261-276.
- Bourgois, P., (2019), "The Political and Emotional Economy of Violence in US Inner City Narcotics Markets”, in A. Lareau, O. Lizardo, and E. Weininger, eds., Ritual, Emotion, Violence: Studies on the Micro-Sociology of Randall Collins, London: Routledge, pp. 46-77.
Week 9. November 11 – Gold, gems and other minerals Invited guest speaker, Dr. Matthieu Bolay
Readings:
- Bolay, Matthieu. 2014. “When miners become ‘foreigners’: Competing categorizations within gold mining spaces in Guinea,” Resources Policy.
- Smillie, Ian. “Criminality and the Global Diamond Trade: A Methodological Case study”, in Illicit Flows and Criminal Things.
- Smith, James. ‘May it never end’. Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 5, pp. 1-34
Suggested:
- De Boeck, Filip. "Domesticating Diamonds and Dollars: Identity, Expenditure and Sharing in Southwestern Zaire (1984–1997." Development and Change 29, no. 4 (1998): 777-810 - Naylor, R. T. Wages of Crime (The Underworld of Gold), specifically pp. 232-240
Week 10. November 18 – Trafficking in bodies and antiquities
- Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. "The Global Traffic in Human Organs." Current Anthropology 41, no. 2 (2000): 191-224.
- Sharp, Lesley A. 2000. “The Commodification of the Body and its Parts,” Annual Review of Anthropology, 29: 287-328
- Barker, Alex W. 2018. “Looting, the Antiquities Trade, and Competing Valuations of the Past”, Annual Review of Anthropology.
Suggested
- Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. 2011. "The Body of the Terrorist: Blood Libels, Bio-piracy, and the Spoils of War at the Israeli Forensic Institute. " Social Research 78, no. 3 (2011): 849-886.
- Brodie and Sabrine. 2018. “The Illegal Excavation and Trade of Syrian Cultural Objects: A View from the Ground.”
- Byrne, D. 2016. “The problem with looting: an alternative perspective on antiquities trafficking in Southeast Asia.” Journal of Field Archaeology.
Week 11. November 25 – Cross-border movement, mobility and forced migration
Pick one of the two pairs of readings below:
- Jason de Léon. The Land of Open Graves (selections)
- Holmes, Seth. 2013. Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies. Migrant Farmworkers in the United States - Brennan, D. 2014. Life Interrupted. Trafficking into Forced Labor in the United States - Mahdavi, Pardis. Gridlock. Labor, Migration, and Human Trafficking in Dubai Suggested
- Chu, J. 2010. Cosmologies of Credit: Transnational mobility and the Politics of Destination in China (“Snakeheads and Paper Trails”, pp. 102-139)
- Kara, S. Sex Trafficking. 2009. Inside the Business of Modern Slavery (Ch. 1) -
Week 12. December 2 – Tax Havens, Evasion, and money laundering
- Ogle, Vanessa. 2017. “Archipelago Capitalism: Tax havens, offshore money, and the state, 1950s- 1970s”, American Historical Review 122:5.
- Palan, Ronen et al. (ed.) 2009. Tax Havens: How Globalization really works (“What is a Tax Haven?”
& “Tax Havens in the Twenty-First Century”)
- Nordstrom, C. 2007. Global Outlaws: Crime, Money, and Power in the Contemporary World (“The Washing Machine, Laundering, Part One” and “The Investment Machine: Laundering, Part Two”, pp.
93-101; 167-179)
Suggested:
- Harrington, Brooke. 2016. Capital without Borders: Wealth Managers and the One Percent.
- Naylor, R. T. 2002. Wages of Crime. Black markets, Illegal Finance, and the Underworld Economy (“Treasure Island”: Offshore Havens, Bank Secrecy, and Money Laundering”)
Week 13. December 9 – Digital crime and the Dark Web
- Coleman, G. 2014. Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous (“Weapons of the Geek”)
- Gehl, Robert W. 2014. Power/freedom on the dark web: a digital ethnography of the Dark Web Social Network.
Suggested
- Coleman, G. 2010. Ethnographic approaches to digital media. Annual Review of Anthropology 39(1): 487–505.
Week 14. December 16 – Final discussion
Monographs (selection):
- Andreas, Peter. 2000. Border Games: Policing the U.S.–Mexico Divide.
- Heyman, Josiah. 1999. States and Illegal Practices.
- Jung, Dietrich (ed.). 2002. Shadow Globalization, Ethnic Conflict and New Wars.
- Korzeniewicz. 1994. Commodity Chains and Global Capitalism.
- Meagher, Kate. 2010. Identity Economics: Social networks and the informal economy in Niger ia.
- MacGaffey, Janet. 2000. Congo-Paris: transnational traders on the margins of the law.
- Shaw, Clifford Robe. 1930. The Jack-Roller
- Smillie, Ian. 2010. Blood on the Stone: Greed, Corruption and War in the Global Diamond Trade - Tanzi, Vito. 1982. The Underground Economy in the United States and Abroad
Additional reading resources:
Drugs & Narco traffic
- Agar, M., (1973), Ripping and Running: A Formal Ethnography of Urban Heroin Addicts, New York:
Academic Press.
- Bourgois, P., (1995), In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Bourgois, P, and J. Schonberg, (2009), Righteous Dopefiend, Berkeley: University of California Press.
- Buxton, J., (2006), The Political Economy of Narcotics: Production, Consumption and Global Markets, London: Zed Books.
- Campbell, H., (2008), "Female Drug Smugglers on the U-S.-Mexico Border: Gender, Crime, and Empowerment", Anthropological Quarterly, 81(1): 233-267.
- Contreras, R., (2013), The Stickup Kids: Race, drugs, violence, and the American dream, Berkeley:
University of California Press.
- de Bernières, L., (1991), Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord, London: Secker and Warburg.
- Dennis, P. A., (2003), "Cocaine in Miskitu Villages", Ethnology, 42(2): 161-172.
- Duport, C., (2016), Héro(s): Au coeur de l'héroïne, Marseille: Editions Wildproject.
- Ghiabi, M., (ed.), (2018), Special issue on "Drugs, politics and society in the Global South", Third World Quarterly, 39(2).
- Grisaffi, T., (2019), Coca Yes, Cocaine No: How Bolivia's Coca Growers Reshaped Democracy, Durham: Duke University Press.
- Meyer, S., (1984), The Lotus Crew, New York: Grove Press.
- Mortensen, T. and Gutierrez, E., (2019), "Mitigating Crime and Violence in Coca-growing Areas", Journal of Illicit Economies and Development, 1(1), pp.63–71.
- Muehlmann, S., (2013), When I Wear My Alligator Boots: Narco-Culture in the U.S. Mexico Borderlands, Berkeley: University of California Press.
- Quiñonez, E., (2000), Bodega Dreams, New York: Vintage.
- Rodgers, D., (2016), “Critique of urban violence: Bismarckian transformations in contemporary Nicaragua”, Theory, Culture, and Society, 33(7-8): 85-109.
- Rodgers, D., (2017), “Why do drug dealers live with their moms? Contrasting views from Chicago and Managua”, Focaal – Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, 78: 102-114.
- Van Dun, M., (2016), "Cocaine Flows and the State in Peru's Amazonian Borderlands", Journal of Latin American Studies, 48(3): 509-535.
- Wainwright, T., (2016), Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel, London: Ebury Press.
- Welsh, I., (1993), Trainspotting, London: Secker & Warburg.
- Wilson and Zembrano. Cocaine, Commodity Chains, and Drug Politics: A Transnational Approach. In Gereffi, Miguel Korzeniewicz Commodity Chains.
