Transparency and Conspiracy: Ethnographies of Suspicion in the New World OrderHarry G. West, Todd Sanders Duke University Press, 17. 4. 2003. - 316 страница 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. |
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... live in societies where the scientific paradigm consti- tutes a predominant interpretative schema " ought to know better . " Con- sider the exasperated — albeit paternalistic - tone of scholarly discussions of " conspiracy theory ...
... lives . " Shamanic rituals have long provided South Koreans with a means with which to make sense of individual fate in a capricious world . What is most interesting for our purposes , however , is that , in recent years , " mediumship ...
... live . Sanders concludes : " Rather than downplaying or ignoring [ the ] magicali- ties of modernity - the patently odd ... lives . Buryats today consequently embrace neither Communist nor post - Communist official narratives , Power ...
... lives constitutes a decisive force in ongoing historical processes . Humphrey describes these reincarnation narratives as paranoid since , as Buryats talk about the past lives of others , they also talk about themselves , if only ...
... lives - and the resultant sense of siege , believers comfort themselves in the knowledge that " God [ has ] a plan that [ will ] turn it all around in the end . " In fact , the worse things appear , the better they are deemed actually ...
Садржај
Gods Markets and the IMF in the Korean Spirit World | 38 |
Diabolic Realities Narratives of Conspiracy Transparency and Ritual Murder in the Nigerian Popular Print and Electronic Media | 65 |
Who Rules Us Now? Identity Tokens Sorcery and Other Metaphors in the 1994 Mozambican Elections | 92 |
Through a Glass Darkly Charity Conspiracy and Power in New Order Indonesia | 125 |
Invisible Hands and Visible Goods Revealed and Concealed Economies in Millennial Tanzania | 148 |
Stalin and the Blue Elephant Paranoia and Complicity in PostCommunist Metahistories | 175 |
Paranoia Conspiracy and Hegemony in American Politics | 204 |
Making Wanga Reality Constructions and the Magical Manipulation of Power | 233 |
Anxieties of Influence Conspiracy Theory and Therapeutic Culture in Millennial America | 258 |
An Afterword | 287 |
Contributors | 301 |
305 | |