Norms and Illegality: Intimate Ethnographies and Politics explores liminal and illegal practices in relation to political control and cultural normativity. The contributors draw on years of ethnographic experiences in Greece, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Italy, Madagascar, Mali, Philippines, and Thailand to study the contradictions of what is legal and illegal. They explore the production of illegal subjects by the state, the creation of illegal and normative values by liminal and illegal actors, and the mutual entanglements of legal and illegal in the public domains of markets and trade networks. This volume shows that criminalization policies are not necessarily oriented toward erasing crime. Instead, the contributors maintain that opaque spaces ensure the efficacy of control and outwardly conform to the rhetoric and ethics of global neoliberalism. Within these contexts, the contributors shed light on moral economies and frames of value entailed in systems of representation that have been set up by individuals who are deemed illegal, liminal, or deviant in their confrontations with the state.

In Economics and Morality, the authors seek to illuminate the multiple kinds of analyses relating morality and economic behavior in particular kinds of economic systems. The chapters explore economic systems from a variety of diverse indigenous and capitalist societies, focusing on moral challenges in non-Western economic systems undergoing profound change, grassroots movements and moral claims in the context of capitalism, and morality-based movements taking place within corporate and state institutions. The anthropological insights of each chapter provide the value of firsthand fieldwork and ethnographic investigation, as well as the tradition of critically studying non-Western and Western societies. Because the moral challenges in a given capitalist society can no longer be effectively addressed without considering the interaction and influences of different societies in the global system, the international ethnographic research in this book can help document and make sense of the changes sweeping our planet.

In Economics and Morality, the authors seek to illuminate the multiple kinds of analyses relating morality and economic behavior in particular kinds of economic systems. The chapters explore economic systems from a variety of diverse indigenous and capitalist societies, focusing on moral challenges in non-Western economic systems undergoing profound change, grassroots movements and moral claims in the context of capitalism, and morality-based movements taking place within corporate and state institutions. The anthropological insights of each chapter provide the value of firsthand fieldwork and ethnographic investigation, as well as the tradition of critically studying non-Western and Western societies. Because the moral challenges in a given capitalist society can no longer be effectively addressed without considering the interaction and influences of different societies in the global system, the international ethnographic research in this book can help document and make sense of the changes sweeping our planet.

This book focuses on the economic, political, social, and cultural dynamics of street economies across the urban Global South. Although contestations over public space have a long history, Street Economies in the Urban Global South presents the argument that the recent conjuncture of neoliberal economic policies and unprecedented urban growth in the Global South has changed the equation. The detailed ethnographic accounts from postsocialist Vietnam to a struggling democracy in the Philippines, from the former command economies in Africa to previously authoritarian regimes in Latin America, focus on the experiences of often marginalised street workers who describe their projects and plans. The contributors to Street Economies in the Urban Global South highlight individual and collective resistance by street vendors to overcome numerous processes that exacerbate the marginality and disempowerment of street economy work.