"Corruption and "Culture" in Anthropology and in Nigeria"

• Published in: Current anthropology Vol. 59; no. Suppl 18; p. S83
• Main Author: Smith, Daniel Jordan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 01.04.2018
• ISSN: 0011-3204
• DOI: 10.1086/695714

This article examines the process of publication and reception of the author's book about corruption in Nigeria as a form of ethnographic evidence that is useful to interrogate the fraught relationship between the concepts of culture and corruption. The evidence points to multiple misunderstandings-but also to the powerful political purposes for which accusations of corruption (and, more specifically, notions of corruption as a "cultural " problem) can be wielded. The essay builds work in anthropology that takes seriously the reality that the people we study may read what we write, and uses local reactions to a monograph about corruption as analytical leverage to illuminate the anthropology of corruption. But the article takes the examination of local responses to a book about corruption one step further, comparing them to the reception and critiques generated within anthropology. The author argues that in juxtaposing these reactions we can see the many ways that concepts of corruption and culture-and the understanding of the relationship between the two-can be mobilized for different purposes and with different effects.