Synopses & Reviews
"This should be made into a movie!"and#151;Katia Lund, Co-director of
City of God"Carolyn Nordstrom destroys the categories through which we normally look at war. This is a major achievement. Her eyewitness reporting, when contrasted with the official histories later compiled of the same events, is a revelation. The amount of 'extra-state' activity surrounding any war is vast, and Nordstrom evokes and analyzes it so fully, so deftly, that no one who reads this book will look at war news quite the same way again. Meanwhile, the extra-state itself, typified by Al Qaeda, has begun to drive world politics and generate wars with terrifying success."and#151;William Finnegan, author of A Complicated War: The Harrowing of Mozambique
"A gripping account of what the author calls 'research into the shadows' -- the often dangerous world of the powerful and wealthy who inhabit global extra-governmental organizations. It is also about the dehumanizing effects of war and violence on the victims. Nordstrom says: 'It is the only way I know how to write about war: being there.' This book provides a rare opportunity of 'being there' with a courageous and highly observant anthropologist. I recommend it highly."and#151;Richard Goldstone, Former Chief Prosecutor of the International War Crimes Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda
"Carolyn Nordstrom, a pioneer in warzone ethnography, gives us an up-close view of the shadowy worlds of wartime economics. Money laundering, blood diamonds, gun running -- Nordstrom puts faces on each of these. Seeing the faces makes the moral dilemmas of war not simpler, but more realistic. This is an innovative and important book."and#151;Cynthia Enloe, author of Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives
"Nordstrom is a compassionate scholar who simply and doggedly uses ethnography to follow the question. This approach takes Nordstrom from the spectacular violence of armed conflict--the flames and mobs and murder--to the even more destructive but hidden structural violence--the 'shadows' that few seek to understand. This is engaged, urgent scholarship at its best."and#151;Paul Farmer, M.D., author of Pathologies of Power
Review
and#8220;An ethnographically rich, peopled account of the global economy.and#8221;
Synopsis
In this provocative and compelling examination of the deep politics of war, Carolyn Nordstrom takes us from the immediacy of war-zone survival, through the offices of power brokers, to vast extra-legal networks that fuel war and international profiteering. She captures the human face of the front lines, revealing both the visible and the hidden realities of war in the twenty-first century.
Shadows of War is grounded in ethnographic research carried out at the epicenters of political violence on several continents. Its pages are populated not only with the perpetrators and victims of war but also with the scoundrels, silent heroes, and average families who live their lives in the midst of explosive violence. War reconfigures our most basic notions of humanity, Nordstrom demonstrates. This book, of crucial importance at the present moment, shows that war is enmeshed in struggles over the very foundations of the sovereign state, the crafting of economic empires both legal and illegal, and innovative searches for peace.
Nordstrom describes the multi-trillion-dollar international financial networks that support warfare. She traces the entangled routes by which illegal drugs, precious gems, weapons, basic food supplies, and pharmaceuticals are moved by an international cast of businesspeople, profiteers, and black-market operators. Shadows of War demonstrates how the experiences of both the architects of war and of ordinary people are deleted from media accounts and replaced with stories about soldiers, weapons, and territory. For the first time, this book retrieves from the shadows the faces of those whose stories seldom reach the light of international recognition.
Synopsis
Carolyn Nordstrom explores the pathways of global crime in this stunning work of anthropology that has the power to change the way we think about the world. To write this book, she spent three years traveling to hot spots in Africa, Europe, Asia, and the United States investigating the dynamics of illegal trade around the worldand#151;from blood diamonds and arms to pharmaceuticals, exotica, and staples like food and oil. Global Outlaws peels away the layers of a vast economy that extends from a war orphan in Angola selling Marlboros on the street to powerful transnational networks reaching across continents and oceans. Nordstrom's extraordinary fieldwork includes interviews with scores of informants, including the smugglers, victims, power elite, and profiteers who populate these economic war zones. Her compelling investigation, showing that the sum total of extra-legal activities represents a significant part of the world's economy, provides a new framework for understanding twenty-first-century economics and economic power. Global Outlaws powerfully reveals the illusions and realities of security in all areas of transport and trade and illuminates many of the difficult ethical problems these extra-legal activities pose.
Synopsis
"A deeply insightful book that connects the dots of the hidden systems that have subverted democracy and caused the type of desperation and anger that result in a 9/11. A book that opens our awareness."and#151;John Perkins, author of The New York Times bestseller
Confessions Of An Economic Hit Man"Anyone interested in global economic crime should read this book."and#151;Charmian Gooch, a founding director of Global Witness
"Global Outlaws is a revealing book about a global trend whose importance is still far from being fully recognized."and#151;Moises Naim, Editor in Chief of Foreign Policy Magazine and author of Illicit: How Smugglers Traffickers and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy
"Carolyn Nordstrom's important new book takes us on a dark journey through war-torn landscapes riddled with corruption, violence, and gross inequalities. It is a compelling studyand#151;one guided by the norms of scholarly research but also written out of deeply felt experience. A book infused by anger, compassion, but also hope."and#151;Andrew Mack, University of British Columbia
"This is a fascinating, insightful, and important ethnographic study of the intersection of crime, finance, and power in the illegal, 'informal', or underground economy. I have read all of Carolyn Nordstrom's books, and this is the best one yet."and#151;Jeff Sluka, Massey University
"Carolyn Nordstrom's Global Outlaws is a rare and remarkable fusion of economic anthropology and travel writing. The prose is highly engaging without being sensationalistic. This is a timely and fascinating read for anyone looking for an on-the-ground account of the clandestine underside of globalization."and#151;Peter Andreas, co-author of Policing the Globe: Criminalization and Crime Control in International Relations
"Carolyn Nordstrom is the best fieldworker in anthropology, bar none. Yet again she has pioneered new fieldsites and new forms of ethnography in this book, as well as presented a new framework for viewing economics and economic power. This is undoubtedly a highly important work that sets new frontiers for anthropology."and#151;Monique Skidmore, Australian National University
Synopsis
Whether looking at divided cities or working with populations on the margins of society, a growing number of engaged academics has reached out to communities around the world to address the practical problems of living with difference. This text explores the challenges and necessities of accommodating difference, however difficult and uncomfortable such accommodation may be. Living with Difference draws on fourteen years of the theoretical insights and unique pedagogy developed by CEDARCommunities Engaging with Difference and Religion. CEDAR has worked internationally with community leaders, activists, and other partners to take the insights of anthropology out of the classroom and into the world. Rather than mitigating conflict by emphasizing what is shared, this work argues for the centrality of difference in creating community: it seeks ways not to overcome or deny differences, but to live with and within them in a self-reflective space and practice. Living with Difference also includes an organizers manual for implementing CEDAR's strategies in ones own community.
About the Author
Adam B. Seligman is Professor of Religion at Boston University and the Director of CEDAR.
Rahel R. Wasserfall is a resident scholar at the Womens Studies Research Center at Brandeis University and Director of Training and Evaluation for CEDAR.
David W. Montgomery is a research associate with the department of Anthropology and the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and Director of Program Development for CEDAR.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
PART ONE: INTRODUCTIONS
1. Prologue
2. A Conversation in a Bar at the Front
3. Making Things Invisible
PART TWO: WAR
4. Finding the Front Lines
5. Violence
6. Power
PART THREE: SHADOWS
7. Entering the Shadows
8. A First Exploratory Definition of the Shadows
9. The Cultures of the Shadows: The Meat, Potatoes, Diamonds, and Guns of Daily Life
PART FOUR: PEACE?
10. The Institutionalization of the Shadows: (Habits of War Mar Landscapes of Peace)
11. The Autobiography of a Man Called Peace
12. The Time of Not War Not Peace
13. Peace
14. The Problems with Peace
PART FIVE: DANGEROUS PROFITS
15. Ironies in the Shadows: (Literally) Untold Profits and a Key Source of Development
16. Why Donand#8217;t We Study the Shadows?
17. Epilogue: Two Sides of the Same Coin
Postscript: The War of the Month Cluband#151;Iraq
Notes
Bibliography
Index