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- Convenors:
-
Luis Angosto-Ferrandez
(University of Sydney)
Francisca de la Maza (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile)
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- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- Ligertwood 214 Piper Alderman Room
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 12 December, -
Time zone: Australia/Adelaide
Short Abstract:
Debates on the future of democracy are inextricably linked to the discussion of corruption. We welcome ethnographic and/or theoretical examinations of such relation as well as analyses of conceptions of the human condition embedded in different understandings of what causes 'corrupted democracies'
Long Abstract:
In the current global conjuncture democracy is under strain. Rather than a consolidated political model, democracy appears to be a fragile practice. Its supporters want to recover and materialise the democratic ideal, whereas detractors despise it as unrealistic or unattainable. At any rate, few people negate the crisis of democracy, and many associate it to forms of (political and economic) corruption - including 'state corruption'.
In this panel we invite ethnographic and/or theoretical examinations of such uneasy relation between democracy and corruption, as well as analyses of the conceptions of 'the human condition' embedded in different understandings of the causes behind what many people denominate 'corrupted democracies'.
On this topic, what do anthropologists find in their field sites? Do people present corruption as the result of specific forms of organising social institutions? Do they consider it as a natural outcome of the human condition? And how do people conceptualise what constitutes corruption? Does it have to do with private behaviours with public political impact or does it refer to institutional processes? Does it have to do with particular economic systems or is it merely an expression of unbridled individual interests? How does corruption affect different notions of democracy and the contemporary state?
This panel will gather presentations addressing these and other questions as bases to discuss different understandings of democracy and corruption and to generate ethnographic grounding and anthropological theory for such understandings.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 12 December, 2017, -Paper short abstract:
In this presentation I draw from experiences of fieldwork conducted in Venezuela at different intervals between 2004 and 2016 to illustrate how different conceptions of human nature mediate people's understanding of corruption in relation to politics, democracy and the state.
Paper long abstract:
In this presentation I draw from experiences of fieldwork conducted in Venezuela at different intervals between 2004 and 2016 to illustrate how different conceptions of human nature mediate people's understanding of corruption in relation to politics, democracy and the state.
I aim to set grounds for a discussion of the way in which different narratives on the human condition are used to explain the causes of social problems and their potential solution, and how those narratives underpin people's political positioning within the polarised scenario that characterises the country.
Paper short abstract:
In this paper I explore Thailand's two museums of corruption. Through an ethnographic description of these museums and their exhibits, I argue that they construct "the people" as a moral category in the aim of problematizing democratic politics and reframing reform as an individual moral practice.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper I explore Thailand's two museums of corruption. The first museum was a traveling sculpture collection that portrayed, often in grotesque fashion, the abuses of the powerful so as to remind "forgetful" Thais of the sins those in power have perpetrated against the country. The second is the permanent Museum of Corruption located in the old Anti-Corruption Office building in Bangkok. Through an ethnographic description of these museum spaces and their exhibits, I argue that they construct "the people" as a moral category to problematize democratic politics and transform reform into an individual moral project. I show how the pedagogical impulses of these museum spaces narrate corruption as emerging first from the immoral hearts of the people and second from the manipulative impulses of the powerful. In this way, corruption is recast, obscuring Thailand's endemic power structures which are organized around closely related and overlapping social networks, in favor of promoting a moral pedagogy that is dispersed evenly across society. This formulation has two implications: First, it links corruption and democracy, locating the problem in the immorality of the population; the immorality of demos produces an immoral government. Second, it recasts corruption as an apolitical problem that requires a long term project of moral reform like the one proposed by the current military government and its supporters. I demonstrate these claims by showing how these exhibitions conceive of their audiences, narrate their stories of corruption, and instruct citizens to transform themselves to change their country.
Paper short abstract:
Local state practices oriented to indigenous peoples in Chile are analyzed in a current context of the emergence of the discourse of corruption at the national level. State practices of indigenous politics and their agents, in this new context, have new readings from this discourse of corruption.
Paper long abstract:
Based on an ethnographic work in the Araucanía Region, in the southern of Chile, oriented to the state practices of public policies for the indigenous population, the perspective of corruption in this local space is analyzed.
Several state practices are identified where three key actors emerge as articulators of this policy: officials (indigenous and non-indigenous), indigenous leaders and consultants. These will be the articulators and negotiators of indigenous politics in the local space, having an increasingly important role as democracy is established since 1990, in a context of agreed political transition and a neoliberal model.
At present, in Chile the speech of corruption breaks out because in the last years the management of economic resources by politicians and officials - of diverse tendencies, levels and public sectors - has revealed corrupt practices institutionalized and Installed "corruption" as a public discourse. This has generated an openness to this issue, which bursts and relativizes the vision of a non-corrupt country at various levels of society. This generates that they begin to name accepted and daily practices of public action under the principle of corruption. Considering this context, we analyze practices of indigenous politics that can contribute to analyze local views and forms of this discourse of corruption.