Jorg Wiegratz – författare

This book offers a comprehensive analysis of economic crimes and market irregularities, including matters of trickery, illicit trade, parallel economy, economies of violence and criminalisation of the poor in neoliberal Africa. It interrogates economic crime as a product of neoliberal reform and transformation (as well as of historical structures). It unpacks crime as a social – and particularly as a political-economic – phenomenon of cap­italism. The book brings together a collection of research articles, briefings and blog posts that were published over a period of nearly 40 years (1986–2023), in the acclaimed journal Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) and on its website roape.net.

Featuring contributions from leading experts in the field, including a foreword by Yusuf K. Serunkuma and an afterword by Laureen Snider, the volume explores what these eco­nomic crimes have to do with, and can tell us about power, class, accumulation, depend­ency, (under)development, state–business relations and capitalist transformation on the continent. In so doing, it sheds new light on the co-production of these crimes by a range of actors from the realms of economy, politics and international development, including international financial institutions and other donors. It responds to the imperative to advance the analysis of the link between capitalism and crime in Africa as more countries across the continent become fully capitalist societies.

Illustrating the relevance of African cases to debates in and across various disciplines – concerning, for example, corporate and white-collar crimes, state crimes, crimes of the powerful, (il)legality, regulation and social harm – this volume engages with a variety of literature to explain economic crimes as phenomena of global and local capitalism. It provides readers from academia, government, business, media, civil society and education with a striking source of information and analysis.

This book offers a comprehensive analysis of economic crimes and market irregularities, including matters of trickery, illicit trade, parallel economy, economies of violence and criminalisation of the poor in neoliberal Africa. It interrogates economic crime as a product of neoliberal reform and transformation (as well as of historical structures). It unpacks crime as a social – and particularly as a political-economic – phenomenon of cap­italism. The book brings together a collection of research articles, briefings and blog posts that were published over a period of nearly 40 years (1986–2023), in the acclaimed journal Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) and on its website roape.net.

Featuring contributions from leading experts in the field, including a foreword by Yusuf K. Serunkuma and an afterword by Laureen Snider, the volume explores what these eco­nomic crimes have to do with, and can tell us about power, class, accumulation, depend­ency, (under)development, state–business relations and capitalist transformation on the continent. In so doing, it sheds new light on the co-production of these crimes by a range of actors from the realms of economy, politics and international development, including international financial institutions and other donors. It responds to the imperative to advance the analysis of the link between capitalism and crime in Africa as more countries across the continent become fully capitalist societies.

Illustrating the relevance of African cases to debates in and across various disciplines – concerning, for example, corporate and white-collar crimes, state crimes, crimes of the powerful, (il)legality, regulation and social harm – this volume engages with a variety of literature to explain economic crimes as phenomena of global and local capitalism. It provides readers from academia, government, business, media, civil society and education with a striking source of information and analysis.

This book presents a re-engagement with oral histories as a way of documenting, understanding, and discussing experiences of work and economic life in Africa under neoliberal capitalism. It draws on seven case studies in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Uganda, and South Sudan, from the late 1980s to the present, to offer a critical analysis of neoliberal transformations and realities at the incisive level of peoples’ biographies.

The last few decades have witnessed unprecedented changes in the working lives of people across the African continent. Oral historical accounts of working lives can offer unique and productive insights into these changes by allowing analyses of neoliberalism that focuses on personal experiences over the longue durée. Yet, there has been a surprising dearth of oral histories of work since the emergence of neoliberalism in the 1980s. Compared to scholarship published more than half a century ago, there has been a decline in the use of oral histories to explore experiences of living and working under capitalism. By grounding analysis in biographical details, histories, and dynamics, the chapters in this book seek better understandings of the wider life contexts, challenges, and circumstances in which people’s ‘agency’ emerges, unfolds, gains traction, and gets (re)shaped; and a better grasp of the multiple, entangled layers and temporalities of life and work in capitalist Africa. This book will be indispensable to students and researchers interested in political economy, development studies, anthropology, sociology, history and African Studies.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Third World Thematics and are accompanied by a new Foreword and Afterword.

This book presents a re-engagement with oral histories as a way of documenting, understanding, and discussing experiences of work and economic life in Africa under neoliberal capitalism. It draws on seven case studies in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Uganda, and South Sudan, from the late 1980s to the present, to offer a critical analysis of neoliberal transformations and realities at the incisive level of peoples’ biographies.

The last few decades have witnessed unprecedented changes in the working lives of people across the African continent. Oral historical accounts of working lives can offer unique and productive insights into these changes by allowing analyses of neoliberalism that focuses on personal experiences over the longue durée. Yet, there has been a surprising dearth of oral histories of work since the emergence of neoliberalism in the 1980s. Compared to scholarship published more than half a century ago, there has been a decline in the use of oral histories to explore experiences of living and working under capitalism. By grounding analysis in biographical details, histories, and dynamics, the chapters in this book seek better understandings of the wider life contexts, challenges, and circumstances in which people’s ‘agency’ emerges, unfolds, gains traction, and gets (re)shaped; and a better grasp of the multiple, entangled layers and temporalities of life and work in capitalist Africa. This book will be indispensable to students and researchers interested in political economy, development studies, anthropology, sociology, history and African Studies.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Third World Thematics and are accompanied by a new Foreword and Afterword.

There is evidence that economic fraud has, in recent years, become routine activity in the economies of both high- and low-income countries. Many business sectors in today''s global economy are rife with economic crime.

Neoliberalism and the Moral Economy of Fraud shows how neoliberal policies, reforms, ideas, social relations and practices have engendered a type of sociocultural change across the globe which is facilitating widespread fraud. This book investigates the moral worlds of fraud in different social and geographical settings, and shows how contemporary fraud is not the outcome of just a few ‘bad apples’. Authors from a range of disciplines including sociology, anthropology and political science, social policy and economics, employ case studies from the Global North and Global South to explore how particular values, morals and standards of behaviour rendered dominant by neoliberalism are encouraging the proliferation of fraud.

This book will be indispensable for those who are interested in political economy, development studies, economics, anthropology, sociology and criminology.