'A Case-study from Postsocialist Albania'

The Global Seminar Series welcomes Smoki Musaraj presenting: “Corruption Indicators, Global Governance and Local Political Drama: A Case-study from Postsocialist Albania.” Since the mid-1990s, there has been a boom in corruption indicators across the globe. Recent works on the politics and sociology of production of corruption as well as other types of indicators have brought attention to the politics and economics of production and deployment of such indicators, especially their impact on governance, both global and local. This talk presents an ethnographic study of the production and deployment of corruption indicators in Albania, a country that relies heavily on international development aid and recently became a candidate for European Union membership. Musaraj traces the production of one corruption perception survey in Albania through a global network of actors and follows the circulation and use of its results among various local political actors. Musaraj is assistant professor of anthropology at Ohio University. Her research focuses on the anthropology of money and value, speculative economic practices in cash economies, corruption indicators and global governance, and postsocialist transformations.