Life in the Ant Trails: Cocaine and caustic circuits in Bissau
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Life in the Ant Trails : Cocaine and caustic circuits in Bissau. / Vigh, Henrik Erdman.
In: Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, Vol. 2019, No. 85, 2019, p. 15-25.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Life in the Ant Trails
T2 - Cocaine and caustic circuits in Bissau
AU - Vigh, Henrik Erdman
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - Faculty of Social Sciences
KW - caustic circuits
KW - cocaine trade
KW - interdependency
KW - transnational organized crime
U2 - 10.3167/fcl.2019.850102
DO - 10.3167/fcl.2019.850102
M3 - Journal article
VL - 2019
SP - 15
EP - 25
JO - Focaal
JF - Focaal
SN - 0920-1297
IS - 85
ER -
ID: 227622304