Event overview
This seminar will be delivered by Penny Harvey, Professor in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester.
This event is part of the Department of Anthropology's Spring Term seminar series.
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This paper offers an ethnographic exploration of how 'corruption' is registered as a moral and a political problem in relation to public works in Peru. The transformative potential of such works is routinely understood to be undermined by corrupt practice. Peru is a country with a strong state commitment to the promotion of public-private partnerships, and to the deployment of technical instruments to promote transparency and increase efficiency in the management of public funds. It is a also a country where the central state has a very ambiguous relation to processes of decentralization (which it both promotes and controls), and a strong tradition of clientalistic politics which influence day-to-day practice across all state institutions. The paper argues that technical instruments introduced to improve the management of public resources and supposedly counter what appear as widespread corruption - in practice have the opposite effect fostering a sense that politics takes place beyond the reach of public debate or scrutiny.
Penny Harvey is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester and co-Director of CRESC, the ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change. Recent publications include (2010) Technologized Images, Technologized Bodies: anthropological approaches to a new politics of vision and (2007) Anthropology and Science: Epistemologies in Practice, both co-edited with Jeanette Edwards and Peter Wade.
www.gold.ac.uk/.../dept-seminars/
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 9 Mar 2011 | 4:00pm - 5:30pm |
Accessibility
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