Category Archives: Law

Global Outlaws

Nordstrom, Carolyn. 2007. Global Outlaws: Crime, Money, and Power in the Contemporary World. Berkeley: University of California Press. Carolyn Nordstrom’s book is an ethnography about the extra-legal, as she calls them, flows and networks, which she sees as constituting a … Continue reading

Posted in Drugs, Elites, Forests, Frontiers, Illegality, Law, Networks, Power, Scale, Sovereignty, Spatiality, The Sea, The State | Comments Off on Global Outlaws

The Sicilian Mafia

Gambetta, Diego. 1996. The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Diego Gambetta’s hugely important book conceptualizes the Sicilian mafia as not an organization but as an industry that’s in the business of producing, promoting, and … Continue reading

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Offshore

Brittain-Catlin, William. 2005. Offshore: The Dark Side of the Global Economy. New York: Picador. This impressive book by William Brittain-Catlin tells the story of the vast “offshore” world that forms an integral—if unacknowledged—part in the globe’s financial architecture. The offshore … Continue reading

Posted in Elites, Illegality, Law, Networks, Sovereignty, Territory, The State | 2 Comments

Traffick

Bhattacharyya, Gargi. 2005. Traffick: The Illicit Movement of People and Things. London: Pluto Books. Gargi Bhattacharyya argues that the wave of global politics marked by the creation of Bretton Woods financial institutions provided ripe conditions for the explosion of illicit … Continue reading

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The Global Criminal Economy

Castells, Manuel. 2000. “The Perverse Connection: The Global Criminal Economy.” In End of Millennium, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture Vol. III. Oxford: Blackwell. [Chapter 3] Manuel Castells sums up the scope, scale, and importance of the global criminal … Continue reading

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State Formation as Organized Crime

Tilly, Charles. 1985. “State Formation as Organized Crime.” In Evans, Peter, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol eds. Bringing the State Back In Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  Charles Tilly draws an analogy between organized crime, with its practices of “protection,” and … Continue reading

Posted in Bandits, Illegality, Law, Pirates, Territory | 1 Comment

Violent Entrepreneurs

Volkov, Vadim. 2002. Violent Entrepreneurs: The Use of Force in the Making of Russian Capitalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Vadim Volkov’s extremely impressive book details how an entire class of “violent entrepreneurs” became the handmaidens of the Soviet transition … Continue reading

Posted in Bandits, Critique, Dialectics, Elites, Everyday Life, Illegality, Law, Networks, Power, Sovereignty, The State, Violence | Comments Off on Violent Entrepreneurs

The Mafia of a Sicilian Village

Blok, Anton. 1974. The Mafia of a Sicilian Village, 1860-1960: A Study of Violent Peasant Entrepreneurs. Cambridge: Waveland Press. Anton Blok’s Mafia of a Sicilian Village is one of my favorite books. It shows how “the mafia” in Sicily emerged … Continue reading

Posted in Agriculture, Bandits, Elites, Illegality, Insurgency/Counterinsurgency, Land, Law, Networks, Power, Scale, The State, Violence | 1 Comment

States of Violence

Coronil, Fernando and Julie Skurski, eds. 2006. States of Violence. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. [Ch. 1-3] This brilliant collection edited by Fernando Coronil and Julie Skurski critiques one of the main stories that modernity likes to tell … Continue reading

Posted in Agriculture, Bandits, Boundaries, Everyday Life, Frontiers, Gender, Illegality, Insurgency/Counterinsurgency, Land, Law, Nation/Nationalism, Post-Colonial, Sovereignty, Spatiality, The State, Violence | 1 Comment

On the Postcolony

Mbembe, Achille. 2001. On the Postcolony. Berkeley: University of California Press. [Intro, Ch. 1-2] In On the Postcolony, Achille Mbembe writes against the making of Africa (and Africans) as a monstrous place, a timeless netherworld suspended from the forward march … Continue reading

Posted in Boundaries, City, Drugs, Everyday Life, Frontiers, Historical-Geographies, Illegality, Insurgency/Counterinsurgency, Land, Law, Nation/Nationalism, Political Economy, Post-Colonial, Power, Sovereignty, Spatiality, Territory, The Body, The State, Violence | 2 Comments