Criminal economies

Gabriel Feltran

Chapter 1 in Elgar Encyclopedia of Economic Anthropology, 2025, pp 286-289 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Criminal economies have become global, and we know little about how their value chains operate. We also lack an analytical framework that transcends the outdated dichotomies of formal/informal economies or state versus organized crime. Drawing on an emerging literature in social sciences, this entry proposes an alternative way to address both problems. On the one hand, it draws on ethnography and exemplifies its use: a vignette in which street children and young drug dealers contest their urban territory is used to address the empirical complexity of a single node of global drug value chains. On the other hand, it is analytically proposed that a triad of power regimes govern contemporary criminal economies. We won’t see the state against organized crime, but rather the actions of a dynamic (il)legal economy in which marginal operators, protection providers, and those who support the idealized enforcement of the law coexist.

Keywords: Criminal economies; Global value chains; State; Organized crime; Globalization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035312566
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