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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... human actions could be rationalized and that the workings of society could , thus , be rendered sensible to its mem- bers , one and all . Contemporary transparency claims constitute yet another way of celebrating the rationality of ...
... human institutions em- bodying complex and differential relations of power . In the varied locales through which they move , they are " decoded " by various people in accor- dance with diverse perspectives on , and experiences of , our ...
... human rights , " and other ideological positions bound up with the notion of transparency expend a great deal of energy in attempts to paint Other ways of seeing power with the brush of " ignorance , ” “ irrationality , " or " supersti ...
... human belief systems , no matter how " strange " they seem . Evans - Pritchard's Witchcraft , Oracles , and Magic among the Azande set the standard here . In an implicit argument with Lévy - Bruhl ( [ 1910 ] 1985 ) , who saw evidence ...
... human use , " see Uhlenbrock ( 1997a , 1997b ) . 3 One could draw a distinction here between two types of unseen powers : hidden ( or concealed ) powers and invisible powers . The former implies some degree of agency - an active ...
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 |