Illegal Anthropology: An IntroductionIn "States and Illegal Practices," Josiah McC. Heyman and Alan Smart (1999) illustrate the symbiotic relationship between the state and illegal practices, arguing that their interrelationship offers "important terrain for studying the complexity of power and 'common sense'" (7). Willem van Schendel and Itty Abraham (2005) contribute to this discussion by highlighting distinctions between the social (licit) and political (legal) construction of legitimacy. Carolyn Nordstrom (2007) further reminds scholars that such distinctions are never static, as the legal and illegal overlap and merge in everyday practice. This symposium builds on such scholarship by examining how dominant legal discourse (often guaranteed by, but not exclusively articulated by, states) "illegalizes" particular people and practices, excluding them from the moral-legal community and rendering them available for criminalization, marginalization, exploitation, and even dehumanization. We therefore define "illegalization" as a sociopolitical process that serves to uphold particular relations of power and delegitimize others (see Gomberg-Muñoz 2011).Many scholars and activists now eschew the term "illegal" for its negative associations. However, we make "illegality" a principal topic of investigation in order to denaturalize and critique legality, reveal the term's sociopolitical construction, and lay bare the profound implications that "illegalization" has on individual lives (Bacon 2008). As a powerful index of social, political, and economic inequality, we insist that "illegality" and "illegalization" be investigated not in opposition to, but alongside studies of the state, power, ethics, and the law. In this symposium, therefore, we examine the effects of the distinctions between legality and illegality and what illegality as a social, subjective (Willen 2007), political, and spatial category produces when, as Nicholas De Genova (2004) puts it, "there is [often] nothing matter-of-fact about . . . illegality" (161).Each contribution interrogates the processes through which legal categories and attendant power relations are solidified rather than taking for granted the authoritative status of the state and the rule of law. Legality is not a stable set of rules and norms, but rather, as Peggy Levitt (2001) notes, the "meanings, sources of authority, and cultural practices that we think of as [legitimate], no matter who uses them or what their goals may be" (112; see also Ewick and Silbey 1998). In this symposium we examine how subjects come to understand practices as right or wrong regardless of, and perhaps in spite of, formal legal classifications, and draw attention to how people engage with, and position themselves in relation to, the law. We attend to how they imagine law should work, and how people craft notions of justice that may parallel, contradict, evade, or reinforce official divides between legal and illegal practices. We illustrate how legal orders institutionalize assumptions justifying societal ...
This article examines the cultural and moral context of trademark piracy in Guatemala. In particular, I analyze what accusations of envy among smallscale Maya garment manufacturers who participate in trademark piracy reveal about two aspects of the social field: first, the changing economic and cultural conditions following waves of neoliberal reform including the criminalization of piracy; and, second, the nonlinear reproduction of forms of moral and legal reckoning at the margins of the global economy. I examine how practices of copying and imitation among manufacturers and competitive behavior more generally are evaluated locally in light of kin relations that promote the sharing of knowledge and resources within a somewhat loose property regime and given ideologies of race and nation that encourage class-based solidarity among Maya people. I find that the normative models and business practices evident among these manufacturers parochialize official portraits of progress, business ethics, and development promoted in neoliberal policy agendas and international law.
In this article, I analyze significant gaps between what branding means in Guatemalan Maya communities and how brands are understood in international projects of legal harmonization that are also about rebranding the Guatemalan nation. Following Guatemala's internal armed conflict, neoliberal statecraft has involved policy approaches that amplify the presence of global brands while compounding conditions of socioeconomic inequality that limit Maya men and women's access to authorized goods. Meanwhile, Maya people are invited to participate in a modernist vision of citizenship and social progress that encourages a privatized model of indigenous identity mediated by branded commodities and formal market transactions. In this context, the brand is a powerful medium through which claims to legitimacy and authority are negotiated at national and local levels. [brands, piracy, intellectual property, trademark, fashion, Guatemala, Maya]
After cultural competency: research practice and moral experience in the study of brand pirates and tobacco farmers a b s t r a c t This article explores the value of ethnographic methods in identifying and addressing ethical issues in qualitative research on stigmatized populations. Examples come from two anthropological projects carried out in populations where stigmatized and illicit activities are prevalent: tobacco farmers in the USA and brand pirates in Guatemala. In both cases preliminary ethnographic research proved essential to understanding potential ethical dilemmas and tailoring research practice to avoid stigmatization. Cultural competency is discussed as a useful concept for approaching ethical issues in the study of stigmatized populations, especially when complemented by ethnographic attention to moral experience, the values, meanings, and relationships that are at stake within a given population. Complicating the professional meaning and application of approaches to research ethics, including cultural competency, that privilege formal research techniques and formal ethical guidelines, our case studies describe ethnography as a process involving interpersonal skills, learning through participation, and situational ethics. Critical reflection on ethnography as process is relevant to debates about institutional review and research ethics and points to the need for enriched professional training and ethical reflection on the social skills amenable to effective and responsible field research. k e y w o r d s : agriculture, cultural competency, Guatemala, institutional review, moral experience, piracy, research ethics, tobacco This article explores the value of ethnographic methods in identifying ethical issues and problems in social research on stigmatized populations. Research with vulnerable populations often demands careful consideration of such perennial issues for qualitative research as research preparedness, institutional at UNIV CALIFORNIA DAVIS on March 11, 2015 qrj.sagepub.com Downloaded from
This article examines how urban violence influences the everyday lives of Guatemalan Maya entrepreneurs who make nontraditional clothing to sell in highland markets and Guatemala City. How urban space is imagined and experienced among apparel producers reflects a process of class differentiation linked to Guatemala's entrance into international trade and legal agreements. Realities of uneven access and unequal resource distribution allow some producers to take advantage of formal markets and official networks in the capital city, while others avoid the city streets out of fear. Such inequalities are obscured when entrepreneurs who benefit from urban connections talk about relative success in terms of a moral division between those who engage in brand piracy and those who do not. In line with an official discourse that blames “pirates,” gangs, and other marginalized groups for the country's social and economic ills, apparel producers who do not copy popular brands often view those who do as immoral and illegal. The case study presented here is fruitful ground for theorizing how cultural representations of urban space influence market strategies and moral logics amidst processes of economic and legal restructuring.
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