Gregson and Crang (2016) - Illicit economies: Customary Illegality, Moral Economies and Circulation Flashcards
Customary illegality
Social acceptability, tolerance or practice of illicit activities by largely legal economic actors rather than just a focus on illegal goods or criminal actors
Illicitness
Transient quality linked to circulation of goods, not a property of goods and economic actors
Illegal vs illicit
Illegal: Domain of economic geography, attention to legitimate actors and institutions following formal regulation
Illicit: Domain of criminology/sociocultural analysis, focusing on marginal and criminal subcultures. (Un)Acceptability of this varies based on intersection between both economic organisation and the wider society.
Illicitness and Eurocentrism in global commerce
There is a lot everywhere.
Comments that it is “organized crime” and “integral to the logic of capitalism and its space economy” - yet critique is
“illegal is defined out of the global core economies to create a template of what mainstream economies should be. Norther-centric argument as this happens in OECD countries as well.
Three aims to think of illegal and illicitness as a part of economy
- Further the work within economic geography to include “zones of toleration” and “social customs” that deem illegality as acceptable/normal.
- Illicitness in “normal” (used for formal - formality bias) economy can gain from thinking through goods and services. global economy should not connect il/legality norms to norms associated with particular territorial jurisdictions
- Illustrate the intersection between customary illegality, moral economy and circulation in constituting illicit economies
Moral Economy of the illicit
- where business practices intersect with the wider social body
- eg legal goods being unacceptable on a societal level for cultural reasons.
- and; tension bewtween acceptability of economic activities somewhere is illegal elsewhere (eg Chinese counterfeiting)
Examples informal sectors in OECDcountres
“Svart arbete” aka undeclared work common and accepted in Scandinavia
Tax havens for multiple big people exposed in Panama papers
Examples of illicitness intersecting global economy
1) Use of illegal labour (informality)
2) Counterfeit goods produced legally in one country but sold illegally in another
3) Tax evasion
Prato in Italy
1)Production of clothing is legally “made in Italy” but….
2) Workers have elements of informality/illegality (Chinese migrants - undeclared job(s), overstay visa, undeclaration of tax etc)
3) misdeclared financial flows from Italy to China
Customary illegality x moral economy
Selective acceptability of customary illegality wihtin business economy
- eg: normalisation of copies within China
- revelations of panama powers
double standards
Illicit flows x circulation
- dark side of globalisation
- entrepreneurs exploit gaps / difference in law enforcements of markets
eg how smuggling was socially acceptable in US long time ago
critical logisitics and code space
also tools to obscure market so customary illegality can pass
Three examples of customary illegality in food production networks
1) Olive oil - usually mixed with other stuff, claiming origins in Italy when not always (relabelling)
2) Honey - countries exporting more honey than their bees can produce
3) Horsegate - UK produced meat containing horse DNA.This happened routinely hence not by mistake. Relabel from Horse (Romania) to Beef (Netherlands)
= ALLFORCHEAPERPRODUCTION
Need to tie disciplines together - political economy, economic geography and cultural economy, to see these patterns - otherwise they remain hidden.
