Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan, "Everyday Corruption and the State in West Africa"
Begins |
24 Apr 2008 - 6:00pm |
| Ends |
24 Apr 2008 - 8:00pm |
| Location |
GPIA Conference Room, 66 West 12th Street. Room 609 |
Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan:
Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan will present on his book Everday Corruption and the State in West Africa. The book is based on two years of collective field and documentary studies carried out in Benin, Niger and Senegal from 1999 to 2001 about petty everyday corruption, which is widespread and systemic throughout the public sphere in all three countries. The research focused on transport and customs, the legal system, health, and public procurements.
Corruption is a way of penetrating further into the daily routine of the public services right to the core of the relations between public services and their users. The ‘real' functioning of the state in these three countries is actually very removed from its ‘official' functioning. Everyday corruption is a social activity, which is regulated de facto and in accordance with complex rules, and tightly controlled by a series of tacit codes and practical norms. The book describes the habits, procedures and justifications involved in corruption and tries to understand how public services work ‘in reality' and how their users participate in or adapt to this mode of operation.
Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan (sardan@ird.ne) is Professor of Anthropology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Marseilles and Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (France). He lives and works in Niger (he has both Nigerien and French citizenship) where he is among the founders of LASDEL, Laboratory for Study and Research on Social Dynamics and Local Development, in Niamey. His has published two books in English, Anthropology and Development (London: Zed Books, 2005); and, with G. Blundo, Everyday Corruption and the State: Citizens and Public Officials in Africa in West Africa (London: Zed Books, 2006). Among his many books in French are Les sociétés songhay-zarma (Niger, Mali) (Paris: Karthala, 1984); Les pouvoirs au village: le Bénin rural entre démocratisation et décentralisation, edited with T. Bierschenk (Paris: Karthala, 1998); Courtiers en développement: Les villages africains en quête de projets, edited with T. Bierschenk et J.P. Chauveau (Paris: Karthala, 2000); Une médecine inhospitalière, les difficiles relations entre soignants et soignés dans cinq capitales d'Afrique de l'Ouest, edited with Y. Jaffré (Paris: Karthala, 2003). He has published numerous articles in French, but also some in English-language journals including Current Anthropology, Critique of Anthropology, Visual Anthropology, Africa, and The Journal of Modern African Studies, as well as chapters in several English-language scholarly works.
He is currently working on an empirical socio-anthropology of public spaces in West Africa, i.e. on the delivery of public services and public goods by African state administrations as well as by local councils, NGO's or development projects. A forthcoming book is on Les pouvoirs locaux au Niger, edited with M. Tidjani Alou.