Institut für Ethnologie
14.01.2025: Vortrag im Ethnologischen Kolloquium von Henrik Vigh
10. Januar 2025, von Christina Fastner
Henrik Vigh (Professor, Head of Centre for Global Criminology, University of Copenhagen) zum Thema:
Critical States and Cocaine Connections: an ethnography of transnational organised crime in Bissau
In a meeting of the UN Security Council on 12 December 2007 a UN official stated that, “the threat posed by drug traffickers is so great that the state is on the verge of collapse (…). Guinea-Bissau has lost control of its territory and cannot administer justice.” With a fourth of the cocaine consumed in Europe passing through the region every year, Guinea-Bissau has been designated, “Africa’s first narco state.” It is feared that the state will be corrupted and ruined by the cocaine connection bringing it closer toward an anarchic lack of formal governance. However, despite our fear of the phenomenon little is actually known about the social and political logics at play. This paper examines the cocaine trade in Guinea-Bissau. It describes the making of a narco state and investigates the country’s coming into being as a regional hub for the trafficking of cocaine from Latin America to Europe. In so doing, it shows how the cocaine trade has become entangled with and trickled into the life worlds, hopes and fears of the city’s many impoverished young men. While cocaine is seen to have brought with it a range of political and societal insecurities it is also perceived as a social catalyst, a development that is able to open new horizons of possibility and reconnect them to global livelihoods and avenues of social being and worth.
Wir freuen uns sehr auf die Veranstaltung, zu der wir alle interessierten Personen herzlich einladen.
Das Kolloquium findet immer dienstags im großen Seminarraum des Instituts statt:
Institut für Ethnologie
Seminarraum 222, 2. OG
Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, Westflügel
20146 Hamburg