Anthropology of Corruption

by

Jennifer Hasty

• LAST MODIFIED: 22 November 2024
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199766567-0292

Introduction

Corruption has become an essential rationale for explaining failures of governance and development, particularly for countries outside of Europe and North America. Wherever societies fail to thrive, politically or economically, politicians and policy analysts summon the notion of corruption to explain why. Corruption is cited as a central contributor to poverty, inequality, lawlessness, ethnic factionalism, weak institutions, and military coups. In countries throughout the world, the news media is dominated by sensational investigative stories exposing bribery, extortion, and embezzlement among elites and government officials. In popular culture and everyday conversations, citizens in these countries express profound dissatisfaction with the frustrations of corrupt processes and crooked officials. Since the middle of the twentieth century, the study of corruption has been dominated by the discipline of political science. Using normative models, political scientists categorize distinctive forms of corruption, document consequences, and diagnose causes, suggesting possible solutions. Following this path, scholars from other social-scientific disciplines, such as economics, area studies, international development, and public policy, similarly approach corruption as a kind of scholarly mystery, looking for clues and correlations in data sets and comparative case studies. The central aim of this scholarship is to find some key culprit that might explain why some societies suffer so much corruption and how they/we might put a stop to it. Anthropologists frequently become fascinated by the public fascinations of the people around them—that is, while conducting immersive, long-term fieldwork on one topic, an anthropologist may realize that people in the surrounding society are much more interested in something else. As preoccupation with corruption has surged in local, national, and global discourses throughout the neoliberal period, a growing number of anthropologists have turned their scholarly attention to the ubiquitous discourses of corruption, exploring the multiple meanings and uses of the concept. The disciplinary commitment to holism motivates anthropologists to explore how the discourses and practices of corruption intersect with other sociocultural realms, including morality, kinship, politics, the state, and economic processes. Relativism encourages anthropologists to set aside condemnations of corruption to explore alternative ways of understanding the actors, practices, and institutions deemed corrupt. In contrast to the normative scholarship from political science and other disciplines, the anthropology of corruption avoids the diagnostic approach of causes and consequences, aiming instead at exploring corruption as a cultural predicament, a complex and elusive problem that seems to defy solution. This bibliography focuses on recent work in the anthropology of corruption, particularly scholarship published over the past decade or so. While several general overviews already trace the anthropology of corruption from the 1990s into the 2010s, the explosion of scholarship since the early 2010s calls for an updated synthesis highlighting new perspectives and arguments. Exceptions are made for earlier works that are particularly seminal or unusual.

General Overviews

General works on the anthropology of corruption specify important conceptual themes and foci, showing how ethnographic methods yield scholarly insights distinct from other disciplines. Torsello and Venard 2015 and Wedel 2012 emphasize the importance of insider perspectives and attention to meanings and moralities in the anthropological study of corruption. Hall and Shore 2005 presents a now-classic collection of anthropological studies on corruption as a cultural problem. Blundo 2007 explores methodological and ethical difficulties involved in the ethnographic study of corruption. Prasad, et al. 2019 and Bodruzic 2016 compare and contrast the anthropological study of corruption with that of other disciplines such as political science and economics. Doshi and Ranganathan 2019 outlines a critical geography of corruption that closely resembles the anthropological approach. Three anthropology journals have recently presented special issues devoted to the anthropological study of corruption (specifically and as a category encompassed by the more general category of fraud). Gupta and Muir 2018 provides an overview of prominent themes in the anthropology of corruption, while Kuldova, et al. 2021 and Beek, et al. 2019 focus on the anthropology of fraud more generally.

• Beek, Jan, Cassis Kilian, and Mattias Krings. 2019. Mapping out an anthropology of defrauding and faking. Social Anthropology 27.3: 425–437.

  DOI: 10.1111/1469-8676.12698

  This is an introductory essay to a special issue devoted to anthropological approaches to fraud. Legally, fraud is defined as deception to achieve unlawful gain, making it a close kin to corruption, often defined as abuse of public office for private gain. The authors explore what the anthropological study of the practices of fraud can tell us about social trust, authenticity, technological change, knowledge production, and the morality of wealth.

• Blundo, Giorgio. 2007. Hidden acts, open talks: How anthropology can “observe” and describe corruption. In Corruption and the secret of law: A legal anthropological perspective. Edited by Monique Nuijten and Anders Gerhard, 27–52. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

  This chapter discusses methodological challenges and ethical dilemmas in the anthropological study of corruption. Defining corruption in terms of “public secrecy,” Blundo argues that the methods used to “see” corruption determine the way we conceptualize it, also shaping anthropological understanding of politics, citizenship, bureaucracy, and the state.

• Bodruzic, Dragana. 2016. Vice or coping mechanism? Bridging political science and anthropological approaches to the study of corruption. Critique of Anthropology 36.4: 363–379.

  DOI: 10.1177/0308275X16654552

  Comparing the anthropological approach to corruption with that of political science, this article highlights the importance of culturally interpretive modes of analysis that frame corruption in terms of moral economies. Bodruzic shows how anthropologists interpret narratives of corruption to understand how the discourses and practices of corruption are embedded in sociocultural contexts.

• Doshi, Sapana, and Malini Ranganathan. 2019. Towards a critical geography of corruption and power in late capitalism. Progress in Human Geography 43.3: 436–457.

  DOI: 10.1177/0309132517753070

  Like the anthropological approach to corruption, geographers Doshi and Ranganathan promote a historicized and culturally situated study of corruption in the field of human geography. Critiquing the global normative discourse of corruption, they explore how local narratives of corruption are politicized in sociocultural regimes of power. They view corruption as a shifting discourse of shaped by three forms of power: symbolic, material, and territorial.

• Gupta, Akhil, and Sarah Muir. 2018. Rethinking the anthropology of corruption: An introduction to Supplement 18. Current Anthropology (Supplement) 59.18: S4–S15.

  DOI: 10.1086/696161

  This article provides an overview of the anthropology of corruption as a conceptual frame for a special issue on the topic. The authors identify the various boundary transgressions of corruption, the intertwining of corruption and anti-corruption, the situation of corruption in legal and ethical regimes, historical forces shaping the discourses and practices of corruption, and the affective qualities of corruption in the context of the state.

• Hall, Dieter, and Cris Shore. 2005. Corruption: Anthropological perspectives. London: Pluto.

  This edited volume illustrates how anthropological studies of corruption can illuminate aspects of corruption overlooked by the field of international relations. The authors interrogate the concept of corruption and consider how anthropologists conceive corruption as a cultural problem involving institutions and systems rather than a moral problem involving only individuals. Chapters demonstrate anthropological approaches to corruption in Italy, Russia, Romania, Portugal, Bolivia, the Balkans, the European Union, and the United States.

• Kuldova, Tereza Ø., Thomas Raymen, and Jardar Østbø. 2021. Corruption and the moral economy of fraud. Journal of Extreme Anthropology 5.2: i–iv.

  DOI: 10.5617/jea.9625

  In this introduction to a special issue of the journal, the authors promote the study of corruption through the lens of the moral economies of fraud. Departing from emphases on good governance so prevalent in political science scholarship on corruption, the authors instead encourage challenges to the hegemonic narratives of the global anti-corruption industry.

• Prasad, Monica, Mariana Borges Martins da Silva, and Andre Nickow. 2019. Approaches to corruption: A synthesis of the scholarship. Studies in Comparative International Development 54:96–132.

  DOI: 10.1007/s12116-018-9275-0

  The authors situate the ethnographic study of corruption in larger scholarship from other social-scientific disciplines. They identify three prominent themes in the anthropological approach to corruption: corruption as a means of acquiring scarce resources, corruption as gift at the boundary of public and private, and corruption as culturally obligatory acts in a moral economy.

• Torsello, Davide, and Bertrand Venard. 2015. The anthropology of corruption. Journal of Management Inquiry 25.1: 34–54.

  DOI: 10.1177/1056492615579081

  This article provides a basic overview of anthropological scholarship on corruption in order to encourage management scholars to broaden their own approach to the subject. The authors show how anthropological concepts and methods challenge corruption scholarship from other disciplines, such as economics and political science. They emphasize the importance of sociocultural determinants and insider perspectives in the study of corruption.

• Wedel, Janine. 2012 Rethinking corruption in an age of ambiguity. Annual Review of Law and Social Science 8:453–498.

  DOI: 10.1146/annurev.lawsocsci.093008.131558

  Wedel argues that the universal definition of corruption as “the abuse of public office for private gain” obscures other forms of corruption, making it difficult to recognize new forms that have emerged in past decades of globalization, technological innovation, and neoliberal reform. The universal notion of corruption is challenged by anthropological scholarship exploring the intentions, meanings, and moralities of social actors, revealing corruption to be profoundly shaped by local cultural and institutional forces.