Description: A sympathetic examination of the failure of anti-corruption efforts in contemporary Indonesia.
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.Brief description: Sylvia Tidey is assistant professor of anthropology and global studies at the University of Virginia.
Review Quotes: "In this excellent ethnography, Tidey interrogates the widely prevalent assumption in global discourse about the state and development that corruption is always inimical to the 'good, ' thereby challenging dominant conceptions of good governance. Based on long-term research in Indonesia, she argues--and convincingly demonstrates--that corruption can, in practice, be deeply intertwined with care. More broadly, the book offers an insightful perspective on ethics embedded in a nuanced understanding of social and political relations."--Daniel Jordan Smith, Brown University