Global Outlaws: Crime, Money, and Power in the Contemporary World (California Series in Public Anthropology) [Paperback]

Carolyn Nordstrom (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0520250966 | ISBN-13: 978-0520250963 | Publication Date: June 20, 2007 | Edition: 1

Carolyn Nordstrom explores the pathways of global crime in this stunning work of anthropology that has the power to change the way we think about the world. To write this book, she spent three years traveling to hot spots in Africa, Europe, Asia, and the United States investigating the dynamics of illegal trade around the world--from blood diamonds and arms to pharmaceuticals, exotica, and staples like food and oil. Global Outlaws peels away the layers of a vast economy that extends from a war orphan in Angola selling Marlboros on the street to powerful transnational networks reaching across continents and oceans. Nordstrom's extraordinary fieldwork includes interviews with scores of informants, including the smugglers, victims, power elite, and profiteers who populate these economic war zones. Her compelling investigation, showing that the sum total of extra-legal activities represents a significant part of the world's economy, provides a new framework for understanding twenty-first-century economics and economic power. Global Outlaws powerfully reveals the illusions and realities of security in all areas of transport and trade and illuminates many of the difficult ethical problems these extra-legal activities pose.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"An ethnographically rich, peopled account of the global economy."--Times Higher Education

From the Inside Flap

"A deeply insightful book that connects the dots of the hidden systems that have subverted democracy and caused the type of desperation and anger that result in a 9/11. A book that opens our awareness."--John Perkins, author of The New York Times bestseller Confessions Of An Economic Hit Man

"Anyone interested in global economic crime should read this book."--Charmian Gooch, a founding director of Global Witness

"Global Outlaws is a revealing book about a global trend whose importance is still far from being fully recognized."--Moises Naim, Editor in Chief of Foreign Policy Magazine and author of Illicit: How Smugglers Traffickers and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy

"Carolyn Nordstrom's important new book takes us on a dark journey through war-torn landscapes riddled with corruption, violence, and gross inequalities. It is a compelling study--one guided by the norms of scholarly research but also written out of deeply felt experience. A book infused by anger, compassion, but also hope."--Andrew Mack, University of British Columbia

"This is a fascinating, insightful, and important ethnographic study of the intersection of crime, finance, and power in the illegal, 'informal', or underground economy. I have read all of Carolyn Nordstrom's books, and this is the best one yet."--Jeff Sluka, Massey University

"Carolyn Nordstrom's Global Outlaws is a rare and remarkable fusion of economic anthropology and travel writing. The prose is highly engaging without being sensationalistic. This is a timely and fascinating read for anyone looking for an on-the-ground account of the clandestine underside of globalization."--Peter Andreas, co-author of Policing the Globe: Criminalization and Crime Control in International Relations

"Carolyn Nordstrom is the best fieldworker in anthropology, bar none. Yet again she has pioneered new fieldsites and new forms of ethnography in this book, as well as presented a new framework for viewing economics and economic power. This is undoubtedly a highly important work that sets new frontiers for anthropology."--Monique Skidmore, Australian National University

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (June 20, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520250966
• ISBN-13: 978-0520250963
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #281,077 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Carolyn Nordstrom is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame. She studies wars, the illegal drug trade, gender relationships, and war profiteering. Her research has made her an eyewitness and scholar of worldwide urban and rural battlefields as well as of the shadowy worlds of diamonds, drugs, arms and smuggling. In addition to her teaching and lecturing, she was recently awarded John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur and John Simon Guggenheim Fellowships and has written dozens of articles, and several books. Having struggled for years to fit the world's roiling multiplex realities into an academic universe too small to accommodate them, she is currently writing a book challenging the academy to update its theoretical foundations for the twenty-first century.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Crucial Reading For Those Interested in International Affairs, August 20, 2007

By 

A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Global Outlaws: Crime, Money, and Power in the Contemporary World (California Series in Public Anthropology) (Paperback)

There's little doubt in my mind that transnational crime networks are vastly understudied relative to their impact on global health, security, and economics. Anthropologist Nordstrom clearly agrees, and lays out the fruits of three years of field work in this loosely arranged triptych of illegal (or as she would put it, "il/legal") trade. Broken into twenty brief (6-10 page) chapters, the book starts with the micro of a lone war orphan hawking cigarettes in Angola and slowly zooms out to the macro of international trade and finance. Each chapter opens with a photo, which helps to ground the discussion in the lives of people, rather than policy. The framework is an ambitious one, attempting to tie together a very broad range of material, and it doesn't always work. For example ports are the focus of three unconnected chapters rather than one sustained narrative.

Others have written about much of the same material before, especially the drug trade, the arms trade, and overhyped blood diamond trade. However, these accounts are generally written from a journalism or policy perspective -- none that I'm aware of have grounded their material in such deep fieldwork, nor written about it with such a good ear for the pithy quote or telling anecdote. One of the central themes of the book is that while drugs, arms, and diamonds get all the press, her fieldwork reveals that trafficking in more mundane goods, such as food, is ultimately a much larger part of the informal economy in much of the world. Particularly chilling is her expose of the international shipping industry and just how laughable the customs and security controls on it are. (The same problems are also well documented in William Langswiesche's Atlantic Monthly essays collected in the book The Outlaw Sea).

Unfortunately, the positive aspects Nordstrom's writing are sometimes weakened by the kinds of arcane theoretical digressions and awkward terminology that often pop up in works by academics. The writing is alo marred by a certain shrill tone when it comes to the workings of large multinational corporations and a somewhat snide approach to the operations of international aid and relief agencies. While I don't generally disagree with her analysis, I find the strident and bitter tone somewhat diverting from the truths she lays out. Criticisms of structure and writing aside, this is a valuable, and quick-reading work that anyone with an interest in world affairs should check out. Nordstrom has done a stellar job in illustrating the pervasiveness and flexibility of informal trade networks, and how they can be manipulated around the world to move just about anything, anywhere.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars all hype, no substance, November 4, 2010

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tortuga - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Global Outlaws: Crime, Money, and Power in the Contemporary World (California Series in Public Anthropology) (Paperback)

A very frustrating book. The author certainly has a certain amount of physical courage but her prose is overblown and her analysis very superficial. Lots of stuff comes off trucks but not much real understanding of the big picture. This is CSI style academia--lots of blood and misery and not much insight. The author clearly has a very high opinion of her own skills but she is a journalist not an anthropologist and this is a series of anecdotes without any analysis to hold it together. You don't learn about who has the power, where it flows from, and how it is maintained. You just learn about how some contraband moves along.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting but lacks detail, January 17, 2011

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S. Shah - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Global Outlaws: Crime, Money, and Power in the Contemporary World (California Series in Public Anthropology) (Paperback)

This is an extremely interesting book, but really likes the details that I was looking for. If you are looking for an interesting read, this maybe something you like, but don't expect to get anything anything really in dept on how global criminal organizations operate.