Over the last two decades there has been increasing concern about the spread of criminal political entanglements and a blurring between legitimate and illegal economies across the world. Against this backdrop extortion, the criminal offence of obtaining money, property, or services from an individual or institution through intimidation (or force), is said to be on the increase. Also referred as ‘protection rackets’, extortionists are typically the source of violence as well as the providers of protection from the violence they mete out. The so-called ‘offer one can’t refuse’ has come to occupy a quintessential position in the global imaginary of mafia-type-criminal organizations. But extortion also exists beyond clandestine criminal networks and it is becoming a profitable source of livelihood and governance and a key visible social relation in many parts of the world. Despite this observable trend, much of academic, policy and media attention still remain focused on extortion’s economic transactional nature rather than its lasting effects in shaping social and moral relations, effects that reach beyond the moment and place of the transaction, as well as its original rationale. As a result, systematic research on, and explanatory models for, the apparent normalisation of extortion relations (including cyber-extortion) in everyday life are currently lacking. Both the physical and the virtual anthropological terrains where extortion sociality is evolving remain poorly understood.
The project main objectives are to produce:
- the first ethnographic account of extortion in social life across South and East Asia, Latin America, Africa and Europe and asks, why is extortion such a powerful cross-cultural statecraft, economic and social relation?
- analytical and theoretical development in the study of power, consent and organized crime
- methodological innovation by conducting a simultaneous cross-national ethnographic research and adding a South-to-South comparative angle in an area dominated by single case studies and a focus on the Global North
- capability by forging an international network of scholars in the emerging field of the anthropology of crime
- policy relevant research in the fields of violence and consent, organized crime, informal economy and development.
