Ethics or the right thing? Corruption and care in the age of good governance

Combining ethnographic fieldwork in the city of Kupang with an acute historical sensibility, Sylvia Tidey shows how good governance initiatives paradoxically perpetuate civil service corruption while also facilitating the emergence of new forms of it. Importing critical insights from the anthropology of ethics to the burgeoning anthropology of corruption, Tidey exposes enduring developmentalist fallacies that treat corruption as endemic to non-Western subjects. In practice, it is often indistinguishable from the ethics of care and exchange, as Indonesian civil servants make worthwhile lives for themselves and their families. This book will be a vital text for anthropologists and other social scientists, particularly scholars of global studies, development studies, and Southeast Asia.

Open Access

The book is available online (Open Access), and soon in paperback as well.

Author

Sylvia Tidey is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Global Studies at the University of Virginia.

Chair

David Kloos, senior researcher at KITLV

Discussants

Erica Larson, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
Annemarie Samuels, Leiden University

Format, time & venue

This book discussion will be a hybrid event and will be held in the conference room of KITLV (room 1.68) and online via Zoom. Time: 14.30 h – 16.00 h CET.

Registration

Registration is required. If you want to attend this book talk on location, please register via: [email protected].
Seats are limited.

If you wish to attend the book discussion online, please register here first:
https://universiteitleiden.zoom.us/meeting/register/u50scOCpqDMpGdNMWjchpD-7cra_936Vk1Wk

Organizers

This webinar is organized by KITLV and the Asia Research Cluster of the Leiden University Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology.

Image

Credits: Sylvia Tidey.