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. |
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... turn so publicly to God and express his faith . The entire family had been touched . It was decided that the next day , Friday , the two oldest sisters would go to the regency capital and attempt to see Pada . They would try to enter ...
... turn giver as an equal . The gift giving during an evangelization group feast thus consists of a series of dyadic status competitions . It is generosity in gift giving that is the mark of a leader within the kin- ship sphere . The ...
... turn more directly to the role that witchcraft plays in imagining modernity today . German and British colonial officials never found Ihanzu an easy place to deal with . In fact , from the first — and bloody - colonial encounter with ...
Contents
Gods Markets and the IMF in the Korean Spirit World | 38 |
Narratives of Conspiracy | 65 |
Who Rules Us Now? Identity Tokens Sorcery | 92 |
Copyright | |
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