Description: "Outlaw Capital explores the ethnographic case of Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, which is described as the "largest illicit economy in the Western Hemisphere." Jennifer Lee Tucker details the city's transformation from a tiny frontier outpost into a global trading hub and demonstrates the key contradictions of outlaw capital: tens of thousands of poor street vendors and traders depend on the border economy, yet outlaw capital also reproduces stark inequalities and undermines democratic practice. The book explores the politics and power of what Tucker calls outlaw capital, profits made in so-called "black markets.""--
Brief description: JENNIFER L. TUCKER is assistant professor in the Community and Regional Planning Department at the University of New Mexico. She has published articles in journals such as Antipode, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, and Planning Theory, among others.
Review Quotes: With elegant prose and vivid ethnographic detail, Outlaw Capital reveals how the class conflicts at the heart of Paraguay's globalized illicit economies have built nothing less than an entire city. It's a compelling and well-told story.--Teo Ballvé "author of The Frontier Effect: State Formation and Violence in Colombia"