Transparency and Conspiracy: Ethnographies of Suspicion in the New World OrderHarry G. West, Todd Sanders Duke University Press, 2003 M04 17 - 316 pages Transparency has, in recent years, become a watchword for good governance. Policymakers and analysts alike evaluate political and economic institutions—courts, corporations, nation-states—according to the transparency of their operating procedures. With the dawn of the New World Order and the “mutual veil dropping” of the post–Cold War era, many have asserted that power in our contemporary world is more transparent than ever. Yet from the perspective of the relatively less privileged, the operation of power often appears opaque and unpredictable. Through vivid ethnographic analyses, Transparency and Conspiracy examines a vast range of expressions of the popular suspicion of power—including forms of shamanism, sorcery, conspiracy theory, and urban legends—illuminating them as ways of making sense of the world in the midst of tumultuous and uneven processes of modernization. In this collection leading anthropologists reveal the variations and commonalities in conspiratorial thinking or occult cosmologies around the globe—in Korea, Tanzania, Mozambique, New York City, Indonesia, Mongolia, Nigeria, and Orange County, California. The contributors chronicle how people express profound suspicions of the United Nations, the state, political parties, police, courts, international financial institutions, banks, traders and shopkeepers, media, churches, intellectuals, and the wealthy. Rather than focusing on the veracity of these convictions, Transparency and Conspiracy investigates who believes what and why. It makes a compelling argument against the dismissal of conspiracy theories and occult cosmologies as antimodern, irrational oversimplifications, showing how these beliefs render the world more complex by calling attention to its contradictions and proposing alternative ways of understanding it. |
From inside the book
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... bodies situated beyond or behind can be distinctly seen , as opposed to opaque , and usually distinguished from translucent . 2. easily seen through , recognized , or detected . 3. easily understood ; manifest ; obvious . 4. candid ...
... body of global financial regulators . " She continues , " [ The word IMF ] stood , not for transparency and fiscal accountability , but for a welter of concealed powers in distant places , both foreign and domestic , whose veiled ...
... bodies , body parts , and bodily fluids heard around the globe ( Campion - Vincent 1990 ; Sanders 2001 ; Scheper - Hughes 1996 , 1998a , 1998b Power Revealed and Concealed 19.
... bodies and persons were subjected to scrutiny by joint army - police patrols and security checkpoints . In the moment ... body was found ) to mean both " rioting and lawlessness ” and “ violently uncovering a hidden truth , making plain ...
... body , " Brown tells us , was subjected to racially informed scrutiny by the American public , who looked on him as both shamefully vulnerable and persistently dangerous ( cf. Bastian , chapter 2 ) . At the same time , the acts of ...
Contents
Gods Markets and the IMF in the Korean Spirit World | 38 |
Diabolic Realities Narratives of Conspiracy Transparency and Ritual Murder in the Nigerian Popular Print and Electronic Media | 65 |
Who Rules Us Now? Identity Tokens Sorcery and Other Metaphors in the 1994 Mozambican Elections | 92 |
Through a Glass Darkly Charity Conspiracy and Power in New Order Indonesia | 125 |
Invisible Hands and Visible Goods Revealed and Concealed Economies in Millennial Tanzania | 148 |
Stalin and the Blue Elephant Paranoia and Complicity in PostCommunist Metahistories | 175 |
Paranoia Conspiracy and Hegemony in American Politics | 204 |