Coloniality of anti-corruption

Whiteness, disasters, and the US anti-corruption policies in Puerto Rico

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3329331
AutoresJose Atiles (0000-0001-5711-7101, Department of Sociology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA, autor de correspondencia)
Año2023
Volumen71
Número6
Páginas1277-1298
Fecha de publicación2023-11-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Sociological Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0038-0261 • E-ISSN: 1467-954X
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/00380261231153751
OpenAlexW4320733510
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas9
Referencias citadas37

This article introduces the concept of 'coloniality of anti-corruption' to help situate and describe contemporary US anti-corruption policies aimed at Puerto Rico. The aim of the concept of coloniality of anti-corruption is to underscore corruption's inextricable relationship to race, class, gender, and other colonial power relations. The article argues that US interventions with the Puerto Rican government, along with its distribution of disaster relief in the wake of Hurricane María (2017) and subsequent earthquakes (2020), are best understood against the backdrop of a long history of corruption narrative implemented by the US. This is a narrative that seeks to legitimate US's colonial and capitalist expansion in Puerto Rico. To demonstrate this, the article explores the application of anti-corruption narratives by the Trump administration to justify its disaster relief policies for Puerto Rico. In particular, the article focuses on Trump's tweets describing Puerto Rican politicians as 'corrupt' and Puerto Rico as 'geography of fraud.' In doing so, the article provides a theoretical account of the uses of corruption and anti-corruption discourses to justify colonial and capitalist's global endeavors. It also illustrates how anti-corruption policies reproduce the idea of the non-white other as the corrupt subject and denotes the humanitarian consequences of such policies

Colonialism · Criminology · Government (linguistics) · Language change · Narrative · Political corruption · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Sociology · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Disaster Management and Resilience · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Law