Cocaine's minor destinies

Ephemerality and legal threat on the margins of the Peruvian state

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2260702
AutoresRichard Kernaghan (0000-0003-1371-0450, Department of Anthropology; University of Florida; Turlington Hall 1112 Gainesville FL 32611, autor de correspondencia)
Año2015
Volumen42
Número4
Páginas658-672
Fecha de publicación2015-11-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAmerican Ethnologist (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0094-0496 • E-ISSN: 1548-1425
EditorialWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/amet.12162
OpenAlexW1873770150
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas4
Referencias citadas24

How do fate and luck become decisive legal temporalities in the social worlds of Peruvian cocaine traders? This article retells an episode from the life of a woman who excelled at running cocaine in Peru's Upper Huallaga Valley. Drawing on her story, I consider how state predations affect experiences of law in a coca-growing region where police have historically exercised a right of spoils. Against legal fate-a threatening "state time" oriented toward misfortune-cocaine traders seek la suerte (luck), which they grasp through sensitivity to mundane details and a willingness to act on unforeseeable opportunities. Their accounts of police encounters reveal how the art of coordinating temporality and movement becomes essential to navigating margins of the state. I suggest that they also demonstrate the relevance of ephemerality to ethnographies of law

Aesthetics · Art · Desert (philosophy · Epistemology · Ethnography · Literature · Luck · Misfortune · Narrative · Political science · Sociology · State (computer science · Temporalities · Temporality · Anthropology · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance · HIV, Drug Use, Sexual Risk · Law · Philosophy · Sex work and related issues