Feathering their own nest: Towards a sociology of corruption talk

• In Event: 50216 - Narrative Strategies in Political Sociology

Abstract

Social theorists have long taken an interest in the question of how members of dominated groups conceptualise their own disempowerment, if at all. Marxist, Bourdieusian, Foucauldian and pragmatist traditions are among the many scholarly traditions which have formulated distinctive answers. Contrary however to the assumption of false consciousness or doxic acceptance, ethnographic studies often reveal lively practices of vernacular critique, whether as ‘hidden transcripts’ or in plain view. One common form of folk critique is 'corruption talk', which is sufficiently rife as to be considered a cliché of political ethnography. However, despite bountiful empirical materials and clear theoretical stakes, we lack a framework for a comparative sociology of corruption talk (as distinct from the sociology of corruption itself). In this paper, I draw on interviews with 121 residents of two post-industrial towns in England, in which corruption was a frequent theme, as well as a wide array of other ethnographic studies, scattered across disciplines, to sketch the contours of a sociology of corruption talk and to highlight future directions. I argue that corruption talk can be understood as as (1) a form of storytelling with its own narrative conventions, (2) a way of making sense of politics, inequality and dispossession, (3) a potential source of political mobilisation, (4) a means to discuss, challenge and impose values and valuations, and (5) a recuperation of agency. The study of corruption talk draws attention to citizens’ role as self-consciously moral agents and to the pleasures of critique, and challenges long-standing accounts of domination and symbolic legitimation.

Author

• Sacha Hilhorst, London School of Economics and Political Science