Suchergebnisse

This article looks at the rise and fall of political legitimacy in Bissau, Guinea-Bissau. Building on long-term fieldwork with impoverished city dwellers, it looks at the legitimacy and sociality surrounding political figures and movements in the country, commencing with the liberation movement (the PAIGC) and ending in the current situation of large-scale drug-trafficking. While the liberation movement was initially portrayed as consisting of noble (Marxist) bandits, the post-independence period has seen the former liberation heroes lose their positive symbolic presence. Established as an alternative to colonial power, the PAIGC fought for the emancipation of the country's people and the realization of an Afro-Marxist political order emanating from its native population. After independence, however, the validity of the PAIGC's claim to power started to decay and become distorted. People became disenchanted with politics, which lost its communal esteem. The imagery and discourse surrounding the PAIGC thus changed and the liberation hero's status moved from that of a social to an anti-social and eventually asocial bandit. The figure became, as such, stripped of its "social" mollifier, leaving behind merely the bandido, to use the Creole term: a predatory figure focussed on individual gain rather than collective well-being.

En este artículo examino el reclutamiento militar de los jóvenes urbanos en África Occidental y analizo su involucramiento en los conflictos como una "navegación social". Propongo una perspectiva acerca de la juventud que asume que esta categoría generacional es a la vez un proceso social y una posición. El artículo ilustra cómo los jóvenes urbanos navegan sus vínculos sociales y las opciones que surgen de las situaciones bélicas para escapar de la muerte social que de otra manera caracteriza su situación. Al describir a la juventud como un tiempo de estancamiento y desgarramiento de la existencia social de los jóvenes en Bisáu, Guinea-Bisáu, queda claro cómo la guerra se convierte en un área de posibilidades, en lugar de ser un espacio de muerte solamente. Así, el concepto de navegación social nos ofrece miradas penetrantes acerca del juego cruzado entre las estructuras objetivas y la iniciativa subjetiva. Esta perspectiva analítica nos permite dar sentido a las formas oportunistas, a veces fatalistas, y tácticas con que los jóvenes luchan para ampliar sus horizontes de posibilidad en un mundo de conflictos, agitación y recursos decrecientes, y nos deja ver cómo el enfrentamiento del conflicto se vuelve una cuestión de equilibrios entre la muerte social y las oportunidades violentas de vida.

This article looks ethnographically at the cocaine trade in and through Bissau, Guinea-Bissau. It clarifies some of the less obvious aspects of illegal cross-border trade and ties the minor flow of drugs, often trafficked by the desperate and disenfranchised, to larger global dynamics. While international media and commentators alike frequently depict transnational organized crime as a pathogen attacking the healthy global order, a closer look at the Bissau cocaine trade clarifies that the trade is neither external nor parasitical but integral to it. The trade's grasp of Bissau is anchored in enduring critical circumstance, stretching from the social to the political, and displays several ironic feedback loops and interdependencies linking misfortune in time and space. The article thus shows how negative conditions may travel and circulate in a manner that ramifies vulnerability across economic and political borders.

This article seeks to outline a contemporary anthropological approach to crime and criminalization, an "anthropological criminology 2.0". This is an anthropological criminology which distances the subfield from its social Darwinist connotations and instead etches itself clearly onto a social and political anthropological tradition. In doing so, the article moves from Malinowski's initial functionalist and localist approach to present-day political and global orientations. It offers five distinct propositions for anthropological criminology to engage with in future: Five propositions, which we believe to be essential for future anthropological studies of crime and criminalization. With these as guidelines, our hope is to fully revive a much-needed dialogue between criminology and anthropology. As we shall see, anthropological and ethnographic insights are currently in demand as global, yet poorly understood, forms of crime are developing alongside ever more crude and amplified reactions to them.