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.
"
Contributors." Misty Bastian, Karen McCarthy Brown, Jean Comaroff,
John Comaroff, Susan Harding, Daniel Hellinger, Caroline Humphrey,
Laurel Kendall, Todd Sanders, Albert Schrauwers, Kathleen Stewart,
Harry G. West
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