Transparency and Conspiracy: Ethnographies of Suspicion in the New World Order

SYNOPSIS

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 the 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 conspiritorial 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-whether through voudou, sorcerers, shamans, or meetings to decipher the battle of God's will and the forces of evil in contemporary political debates-people express profound suspicions of the United Nations, the state, political parties, police, courts, international financial institutions, banks, traders and shop keepers, 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 anti-modern, irrational oversimplifications, showing how these beliefs render the world more, not less, complex by calling attention to its contradictions and proposing alternative ways of understanding it.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publisher

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 the 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 conspiritorial 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-whether through voudou, sorcerers, shamans, or meetings to decipher the battle of God's will and the forces of evil in contemporary political debates-people express profound suspicions of the United Nations, the state, political parties, police, courts, international financial institutions, banks, traders and shop keepers, 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 anti-modern, irrational oversimplifications, showing how these beliefs render the world more, not less, complex by calling attention to its contradictions and proposing alternative ways of understanding it.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

There are few topics of more profound and immediate significance than transparency and conspiracy, the twin specters of contemporary globality. Harry G. West and Todd Sanders's collection displays the virtues of analyzing the particularities of experience in different places while, at the same time, treating this topic as one with general implications and transnational origins. This is what anthropology does best, and this group of essays does it very well indeed. — Rosalind C. Morris