Kedron Thomas

Resocializing Suffering Neoliberalism, Accusation, and the Sociopolitical Context of Guatemala's New Violence

An ethnographic account of the putative shift away from state-sponsored violence and the emergence of new patterns of violence in postwar Guatemala challenges liberal political and moral models that narrowly interpret violence in terms of individual suffering and/or culpability. Such models converge with a resurgence of right-wing political activity. The origins and outcomes of violence are more usefully and accurately conceived in terms of structural and societal conditions. Guatemalas new violence (e.g., crime, gang activity, and vigilantism) is not the chaos of media accounts but a manifestation of enduring legacies of state violence and the social and economic insecurities brought on by structural adjustment policies.

Intellectual Property Law and the Ethics of Imitation in Guatemala

This article examines the cultural and moral context of trademark piracy in Guatemala. In particular, I analyze what accusations of envy among small-scale Maya garment manufacturers who participate in trademark piracy reveal about two aspects of the social field: first, the changing economic and cultural conditions following waves of neoliberal reform including the criminalization of piracy; and, second, the nonlinear reproduction of forms of moral and legal reckoning at the margins of the global economy. I examine how practices of copying and imitation among manufacturers and competitive behavior more generally are evaluated locally in light of kin relations that promote the sharing of knowledge and resources within a somewhat loose property regime and given ideologies of race and nation that encourage class-based solidarity among Maya people. I find that the normative models and business practices evident among these manufacturers parochialize official portraits of progress, business ethics, and development promoted in neoliberal policy agendas and international law.

After cultural competency: research practice and moral experience in the study of brand pirates and tobacco farmers

This article explores the value of ethnographic methods in identifying and addressing ethical issues in qualitative research on stigmatized populations. Examples come from two anthropological projects carried out in populations where stigmatized and illicit activities are prevalent: tobacco farmers in the USA and brand pirates in Guatemala. In both cases preliminary ethnographic research proved essential to understanding potential ethical dilemmas and tailoring research practice to avoid stigmatization. Cultural competency is discussed as a useful concept for approaching ethical issues in the study of stigmatized populations, especially when complemented by ethnographic attention to moral experience, the values, meanings, and relationships that are at stake within a given population. Complicating the professional meaning and application of approaches to research ethics, including cultural competency, that privilege formal research techniques and formal ethical guidelines, our case studies describe ethnography as a process involving interpersonal skills, learning through participation, and situational ethics. Critical reflection on ethnography as process is relevant to debates about institutional review and research ethics and points to the need for enriched professional training and ethical reflection on the social skills amenable to effective and responsible field research.

Ethics, evaluation, and economies of value amidst illegal practices

This special issue focuses on illegal practices and the forms of value produced as people engage in them. Embracing a methodological orientation that attends to criminalized networks and the values they structure from the inside, the contributions included here highlight micro processes of exchange and evaluation. By linking the study of local worlds to the apprehension of wider structural and cultural dynamics and processes, the collection develops a critical perspective on formal law’s legitimizing and delegitimizing effects with respect to the ethical and economic values illegal activities produce.

Economic regulation and the value of concealment in highland Guatemala

In this article, I contribute to conversations in anthropology regarding the dynamics of secrecy that so often attend to informal and illegal practices. Tracing the historical unfolding of an industry that involves indigenous Maya men who make clothing to sell in regional markets, I am interested in the contemporary value of concealment for clothing producers whose work was once regulated by the state, but is now regulated by an array of market and non-market actors. I find that practices of concealment hold particular value for Maya men whose relationships to various forms of political and economic authority have been marked largely by violence and exploitation.

Violent Democracies in Latin America (review)

Democratization and violence are not new topics for scholars and students of Latin America. In the two decades or so since the region’s “democratic transition,” social science research there has often sought to address a basic conundrum: Why has the end of authoritarianism, state violence, and civil war in Latin America, the proliferation of electoral democracy, and the extension of basic civil and political rights to the populace been accompanied by a rise in various forms of violence? Contributors to the volume Violent Democracies in Latin America do an excellent job of opening new paths for exploring this abiding question. The book is well-suited for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars at all levels interested in Latin America, post-conflict or post-authoritarian states, or comparative politics in general. In the volume’s introduction, editors Enrique Desmond Arias and Daniel M. Goldstein overview and interrogate the dominant approaches to research on violence and democracy in political science and anthropology,