1,721,024 research outputs found
“Gomorra”: una bella lezione di antropologia
No full textThis article explores Roberto Saviano’s international best-seller Gomorrah as an “ethnographic novel”, an expression that actually turns upside down and complements
the characterization the author himself suggested for his book as a “literary investigation”. The main purpose is not so much to analyse Saviano’s distinctive non-fictional (or blurred) genre and rhetorical style, but rather to take advantage of his book as a way to consider how cultural anthropology identifies and constructs its own research objects. Notably, focusing on the passages in which the author considers or discusses significant issues such as language, time, space and knowledge, I argue that Gomorrah represents a chance to reflect upon how the conventional aims and methods of cultural anthropology are currently challenged and reorganised under present-day neo-liberal corporate capitalism. Finally, while most commentators
see Gomorrah as a book about the illegal trafficking of the Neapolitan Mafialike criminal organization known as “Camorra”, this article provocatively suggests understanding it as an inspired and morally disturbing account of ourselves. An ethnographically sensitive account exploring both legal and illegal practices of production, consumption, and circulation of goods and commodities in which we all are deeply implicated
Non-binding coercions: Ethnographic perspectives on Soft Law, Theme Section of FOCAAL. JOURNAL OF GLOBAL AND HISTORICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
No full textIdentité et proprieté en milieu urbain: locataires et propriétaires dans la Roumanie contemporaine
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Marshall SAHLINS, What Kinship Is—And Is Not, 2013, Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 110 p.
No full textThe Rule of Soft Law: An Introduction
No full textThis introductory article aims to clarify why soft law is an interesting field to explore from a legal anthropological perspective and to point out a number of issues this theme section suggests taking into consideration. The article provides the context for the theme section, inserting soft law within global legal concerns and processes. It outlines the emergence of the notion of soft law, and summarizes the controversies it has raised among legal scholars and law practitioners. Then it explains why, despite the elusive character of the notion and its uncertain normative status, as soon as we move beyond a number of emblematic concerns for law practitioners, soft law mechanisms and practices appear to be a vantage point to explore the emerging transnational legal order, and particularly the relations among state, supra-state, and non-state (private) forms of regulation. Finally, the article introduces the articles in the special section of this issue by highlighting the ways in which they empirically deal with soft law practices and
global legal pluralism in a variety of social fields and contexts, using ethnographic sensitivity and imagination
Corruption and Anti-Corruption. Local Discourses and International Practices in Post-Socialist Romania
No full textIn the past two decades academic and research literature on “corruption” has flourished. During the same period organizations and initiatives fighting against corruption have also significantly expanded, turning “anti-corruption” into a new research subject. However, despite a few exceptions there is a division of labor between scholars who study corruption itself and those who study the global anti-corruption industry. Juxtaposing corruption’s local discourses and anti-corruption international practices, this article is an attempt to bring together these two intertwined research dimensions and explore how an ethnographic approach might contribute to framing them together. Firstly, it describes how corruption in Romania is often conceptualized and explained in terms of national heritage, something related to old and recent cultural history, including traditional folklore. Secondly, it explores how anti-corruption works in practice, focusing on international legal cooperation projects monitoring the progress and shortcomings both prior to and post Romania’s accession to the European Union. Finally, revealing the articulations of these two apparently unrelated research fields, the article argues that corruption’s local explanations and the circular logic of auditing observed within the anti-corruption industry share a common developmental ideology mirroring the crypto-colonialist structure of power relations and dependency among European nation-states emerging out of the Cold War
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