Crime's Power
 Anthropologists and the Ethnology of Crime

Philip C. Parnell and Stephanie C. Kane
'The essays that make up Crime's Power draw upon the best tools of anthropology to attack, undermine, and encircle the issue of "crime." They provide fresh insights into the social category "crime" and a fascinating window into major issues of power, law, development, neoliberalism, and globalization generally. Fun to read and at the same time theoretically rich...' - Bryant Garth, Director, American Bar Foundation

'What does it mean to take an anthropological perspective on crime? This important volume revisits the critically important insight that crime is a socially constructed category and shows its implications for governance and power around the world. Challenging the current preoccupation with crime control, this radical perspective examines how actions come to be defined as crimes and explores whose interests are served by these definitions in case studies from Latin America, Africa, Europe, Asia, and the U.S.' - Sally Engle Merry, professor of Anthropology at Wellesley College The changes that are engulfing the world today - the fall of nation-states and dictatorships, migrations and border crossings, revolution, democratization, and the international spread of capital - call for new approaches to the subject of crime. Anthropologists engage a variety of methods to answer that call in Crime's Power. Their view of crime extends into the intimacies of everyday life as war transforms personal identities, the violence of a serial killer inhabits paintings, and as the feel of imprisonment reveals society's potentials. Moving beyond the fixities of law, this book explores the nature of crime as an expression of power across the spectrum of human differences.

Contents Introduction
Traversing the Q'eqchi' Imaginary: The Conjecture of Crime in Livingston; Guatemala; H.E.Kahn
Crime as a Category-Domestic and Globalized; L.Nader
The Anthropologist Accused; J.Starr
Wild Power in Post-Military Brazil; D.T.Linger
Recognition of State Authority as a Cost of Involvement in Moroccan Border Crime; D.A.McMurray
Representations of Crime: On Showing Paintings by a Serial Killer; A.Brydon & P.Greenhill
Criminal Instabilities: Narrative Interruptions and the Politics of Criminality; J.Martin
Criminalizing Colonialism: Democracy Meets Law in Manila; P.C.Parnell
Mafia Without Malfeasance, Clans Without Crime: The Criminality Conundrum in Post-Communist Europe; J.Wedel
Hear No Evil, Read No Evil, Write No Evil: Inscriptions of the French World War II Collaborationism; V.Mark
Solidarity and Objectivity: Re-reading Durkheim; C.J.Greenhouse
Epilogue; S.Kane PHILIP C. PARNELL is an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at Indiana University in Bloomington with appointments in Anthropology, Caribbean and Latin American Studies, and the Center on Southeast Asia. He is author of the book Escalating Disputes: Social Participation and Change in the Oaxacan Higlands. He has also recently served as the American Ethnologist's Editor for Reviews.

STEPHANIE C. KANE is an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at Indiana University with appointments in Anthropology, Folklore, and Latin American Studies. She is author of The Phantom Gringo Beat: Shamanic Discourse and Development in Panama and AIDS Alibis: Sex, Drugs, and Crime in the Americas.