Transparency and Conspiracy: Ethnographies of Suspicion in the New World OrderHarry G. West, Todd Sanders Duke University Press, 2003 M04 17 - 328 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. |
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... structure to the " rational " and " transparent " operation of power , power continues in reality to work in unpredictable and capricious ways . Transparency , we have suggested , is a term that has only recently gained global currency ...
... structures of power that affect anthropology's more conventional subjects . Studying up is generally understood as work " behind enemy lines , " but this seems justified when one considers the balance of power . Studying behind enemy ...
... Structural Adjustment Program , regional elites combined with outsiders in the early 1990s to secure government support for the building of an airport in Owerri , “ opening up " the town to adventurous investors . Watching the comings ...
... structural determinacies of . . . open and transparent bureaucracies . ” In his essay , Todd Sanders presents a case that further challenges the idea — implicit or explicit in the works of countless social theorists — that " modernity ...
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Contents
1 | |
1 Gods Markets and the IMF in the Korean Spirit World Laurel Kendall | 38 |
Narratives of ConspiracyTransparency and Ritual Murder in the Nigerian Popular Print and Electronic Media Misty L Bastian | 65 |
3 Who Rules Us Now? Identity Tokens Sorcery and Other Metaphors in the 1994 Mozambican Elections Harry G West | 92 |
Charity Conspiracy and Power in New Order Indonesia Albert Schrauwers | 125 |
Revealed and Concealed Economies in Millennial Tanzania Todd Sanders | 148 |
Paranoia and Complicity in PostCommunist Metahistories Caroline Humphrey | 175 |
7 Paranoia Conspiracy and Hegemony in American Politics Daniel Hellinger | 204 |
Reality Constructions and the Magical Manipulation of Power Karen McCarthy Brown | 233 |
Conspiracy Theory and Therapeutic Culture in Millennial America Susan Harding and Kathleen Stewart | 258 |
An Afterword Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff | 287 |
Contributors | 301 |
Index | 305 |