Life in the ant trails

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2616445
AutoresH Vigh (0000-0003-4760-5595, University of Copenhagen [email protected], autor de correspondencia)
Año2019
Volumen2019
Número85
Páginas15-25
Fecha de publicación2019-12-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaFocaal (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0920-1297 • E-ISSN: 1558-5263
EditorialBerghahn Books (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.3167/fcl.2019.850102
OpenAlexW2986771979
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas10
Referencias citadas26

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

Computer security · Criminology · Economics · Interdependence · Misfortune · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance · HIV, Drug Use, Sexual Risk · Law · Sex work and related issues