杏吧原创

FOR a fascinating journey into the heart of the global , who better to travel with than one of the world鈥檚 leading field anthropologists, Carolyn Nordstrom. Her book reveals the day-to-day lives of those who depend on and fuel the world鈥檚 extensive network of illegal trading, which goes unrecorded by official economic indicators yet is essential to the livelihoods of millions of people.

Nordstrom鈥檚 personal approach to this global issue sets her book apart. It starts with her encounter with a homeless boy in a town in Angola, selling foreign cigarettes and old coins on the street to survive. This scene may seem a long way from the trillion-dollar international illegal economy that Nordstrom sets out to document, but it neatly demonstrates how such street activities are part of a global web. The shadow economy is a network of criminal groups, small-time traders and smugglers, the military, money-launderers, businesses, offshore banks and multinational corporations in every continent. It trades in everything from blood diamonds, oil, arms, drugs and pharmaceuticals to everyday commodities like software, clothes and food. Nordstrom鈥檚 exhaustive groundwork in Africa, Europe, Asia and the US, conducted over three years, includes interviews and case studies of the people who make this vast underground network tick. Her book illuminates the intersections of global crime, finance and power.

As an economist who studies the shadow economy, organised crime, money laundering and the finances of terrorist organisations, I found it enlightening, particularly in some of its analysis. For example, Nordstrom rightly asks the questions: what defines a transaction as legal or illegal, and under what circumstances can illegal economic activities be made legal?

I take issue with some of her arguments, however. She often attacks the 鈥渢raditional鈥� disciplines of economics and political science, accusing them, for example, of being unable to critically analyse what is actually happening below the surface of the global economy or to provide useful solutions. Early on she writes: 鈥淚n a world where the legal and illegal are neatly divided into clear categories, attaching values, whether moral or monetary, is relatively easy. Such neat divisions make both research and policy straightforward. Except that such research and policy don鈥檛 match the realities of the economic world.鈥� I wonder if her criticism is really useful; rarely is anything so neatly divided into legal and illegal, especially in my area of economics. What鈥檚 more, a large body of focusing on the shady area where legal and illegal meet is already shedding light on shadow-economy activities, trying to understand the extent of their influence, who they benefit and when they harm.

Similarly, I found Nordstrom鈥檚 descriptive analyses of money-laundering techniques, offshore banking and criminal money interesting, but she seems to have ignored much of the extensive in-depth research that already exists into these activities. One of the major problems for researchers and policy-makers working in this field is to develop mechanisms to uncover criminal activity without hindering free trade 鈥� it is almost impossible. When Nordstrom remarks that too little is done against smuggling and other criminal trading, I have to ask: what is the alternative? How can we stop the illegal trade without disrupting the legal?

鈥淚t is almost impossible to stop the illegal trade without disrupting the legal鈥�

This is an important book, especially for its analysis of how individuals contribute to the shadow economy. We should be cautious, though, when drawing general conclusions about how the world functions 鈥� and especially the criminal world 鈥� from such case studies. In spite of this criticism, I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in global economics of crime.