Resumen de Corruption and “Culture” in Anthropology and in Nigeria
This article examines the publication and reception of my book about corruption in Nigeria as a form of ethnographic evidence that is useful to interrogate the fraught relationship between the concepts of culture and corruption. The evidence points to multiple misunderstandings—but also to the powerful political purposes for which accusations of corruption (and, more specifically, notions of corruption as a cultural problem) can be wielded. This essay builds on work in anthropology that takes seriously the reality that the people we study may read what we write, and it uses local reactions to a monograph about corruption as analytical leverage to illuminate the anthropology of corruption. But this article takes the examination of local responses to a book about corruption one step further, comparing them with the reception and critiques generated within anthropology. I argue that, in juxtaposing these reactions, we can see the many ways that concepts of corruption and culture—and the understanding of the relationship between the two—can be mobilized for different purposes and with different effects
