Transparency and Conspiracy: Ethnographies of Suspicion in the New World OrderHarry G. West, Todd Sanders Duke University Press, 17. apr. 2003 - 316 sider 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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... conspiracy theorists on - line ( Belsie 1997 ; James 2001 ; see also Bastian , Hellinger , and Harding and Stewart ... conspiracy theories about such diverse topics as the " Trilateral Commission " and the " Illuminati " ( both said to ...
... conspiracy a fundamental component to its ongoing macroplot , spinning it into other conspiracies , big and small . Not all viewers of the once- popular show necessarily believe in the Roswell conspiracy ... theories thrive around the globe , ...
... conspiracy theories and urban myths , on the one hand , and beliefs in occult powers , on the other , are not at all the same . This has , indeed , been the general assumption in the existing literature on both conspiracy theories and ...
... conspiracy theories are not necessarily fully fledged cosmologies , they constitute occult perspectives on the world , for they , too , concern themselves with the operation of secret , mysterious , and / or unseen powers . They , too ...
... conspiracy ideas is as great , it would seem , as the breadth of global transparency claims . No one is more aware of conspiracy theories and / or occult cosmologies than the purveyors of global transparency discourse . Ideas that power ...
Indhold
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 |