Illicit Flows and Criminal Things: States, Borders, and the Other Side of Globalization

Tracking Globalization

by Willem van Schendel (Editor), Itty Abraham (Editor)

Illicit Flows and Criminal Things offers a new perspective on illegal transnational linkages, international relations, and the transnational. The contributors argue for a nuanced approach that recognizes the difference between "organized" crime and the thousands of illicit acts that take place across national borders every day. They distinguish between the illegal (prohibited by law) and the illicit (socially perceived as unacceptable), which are historically changeable and contested. Detailed case studies of arms smuggling, illegal transnational migration, the global diamond trade, borderland practices, and the transnational consumption of drugs take us to Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and North America. They allow us to understand how states, borders, and the language of law enforcement produce criminality, and how people and goods which are labeled "illegal" move across regulatory spaces.

266 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Willem van Schendel works in the fields of anthropology and history of Asia. He was Professor of Comparative History at Erasmus University Rotterdam, from 1990 to 1996, and then became Professor of Modern Asian History at the University of Amsterdam. Simultaneously he was appointed at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. His research interests include borderlands, more-than-human history, labour history, indigo production, indigeneity, and photography. His publications deal with South and Southeast Asia, with a special focus on Bangladesh and the Eastern Himalayas.