Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an

Many might say we have a sim­ple an­swer to that ques­tion. It is the one of­fered by West­ern aca­d­e­mics and the law–cor­rup­tion is the abuse of pub­lic of­fice and/or pow­er for pri­vate and per­son­al gain.Oth­ers may not have a de­f­i­n­i­tion but we can imag­ine they know cor­rup­tion when they see or hear about it. And that's the prob­lem with defin­ing cor­rup­tion; it's a lot more var­ied than the sim­ple de­f­i­n­i­tion.

For starters, any uni­ver­sal de­f­i­n­i­tion of cor­rup­tion as­sumes cul­ture plays no part in un­der­stand­ing cor­rup­tion. Yet recog­nis­ing cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences in so­ci­eties is prob­a­bly one rea­son why ac­tion on cor­rup­tion re­mains am­bigu­ous.

As IMF econ­o­mist Vi­to Tanzi found: "to ar­gue that the per­son­al re­la­tion­ships that come to be es­tab­lished be­tween pub­lic sec­tor em­ploy­ees and in­di­vid­u­als who deal with them re­flect a 'cor­rupt' so­ci­ety may be cor­rect in a le­gal­is­tic sense, but it miss­es the point that these re­la­tion­ships sim­ply re­flect dif­fer­ent so­cial and moral norms."

For ex­am­ple, a re­cent dis­cus­sion about Jack Warn­er's al­leged abus­es of pow­er are that they are part and par­cel of how we do things in T&T. That it's not just Jack who po­ten­tial­ly has been in­volved in dodgy deeds, but al­so the peo­ple who al­lowed him to get away with those deeds. And that long list might po­ten­tial­ly in­clude cur­rent and for­mer politi­cians, the po­lice, the fire ser­vice, at­tor­neys, bank per­son­nel, the pres­i­dent, busi­ness­men and var­i­ous oth­ers.

Now the au­thor of such an ar­gu­ment is right to sug­gest peo­ple in­volved in cor­rup­tion are usu­al­ly fa­cil­i­tat­ed by peo­ple who at the least turn a blind eye or, at the worst, ac­cept il­lic­it pay­ments. Yet if so many dif­fer­ent peo­ple ac­qui­esce to such be­hav­iour, might that sug­gest not every­one per­ceives cor­rup­tion with the same val­ues and ethics as those of us out­raged?

An­thro­pol­o­gists work­ing around the world have demon­strat­ed that what is ac­cept­able be­hav­iour is dis­tinct de­pend­ing on par­tic­u­lar his­to­ries and so­cial bound­aries. So a bribe isn't al­ways bribe. And in­sid­er trad­ing isn't al­ways wrong. Here's a lo­cal ex­am­ple. Many peo­ple sug­gest there is mass cor­rup­tion tak­ing place at the li­cens­ing of­fice on Wright­son Road.

Yet one per­son's de­f­i­n­i­tion of abuse of pub­lic of­fice is an­oth­er per­son's de­f­i­n­i­tion of the nor­mal way things get done. In­ter­est­ing­ly, not every­one pays the same "bribe" amounts for the same out­come there. This po­ten­tial for barter sug­gests that while bribes might be an is­sue, to some it is the amount of the bribe rather than the act of a bribe it­self that caus­es great­est of­fence.

This ne­go­ti­a­tion, as any­one who has wit­nessed it can at­test, is of­ten a game of wit, in­tel­li­gence and ex­pe­ri­ence. The "ne­go­ti­a­tion" it­self is a lo­cal, cul­tur­al way of in­ter­act­ing that takes place across T&T from land deals to get­ting dri­vers' li­cens­es. We haven't al­ways called this cor­rup­tion though. For decades we've ac­cept­ed it be­cause that's just how things get done here.

We have spe­cif­ic lo­cal words like lagniappe, bligh, ease-up, bobolist, and bobol that pro­vide lin­guis­tic ev­i­dence of a vary­ing, his­tor­i­cal way of do­ing things which was cor­rupt, but not cor­rup­tion. This sug­gests that what is and what isn't cor­rup­tion varies from one coun­try and time to an­oth­er, de­pend­ing on par­tic­u­lar his­to­ries and cul­tures of be­hav­iour.

It is al­so sug­gests that cor­rup­tion is not a sin­gu­lar act, rather it is a toolk­it of prac­tices and be­hav­iours that can in­clude ped­dling in­flu­ence, nepo­tism, in­sid­er trad­ing, un­truth­ful­ness, bribes, abuse of pow­er, em­bez­zle­ment, mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of fund­ing, false ac­count­ing and more.

The oth­er di­men­sion to this wider de­f­i­n­i­tion of cor­rup­tion is we start to see acts play out not on­ly in are­nas where pow­er is most ob­vi­ous, like pol­i­tics and busi­ness. We see acts of cor­rup­tion hap­pen in most ar­eas and ac­tiv­i­ties where some sort of trans­ac­tion takes place.

This in­cludes hos­pi­tals, schools, road­blocks, cus­toms, and many oth­er places. Prob­lema­tis­ing what is cor­rup­tion doesn't ex­cuse break­ing the law, rather it is an ex­pla­na­tion that vari­a­tions in cul­tur­al val­ues and so­cial ex­pe­ri­ences con­tribute to how busi­ness and pub­lic ser­vices are con­duct­ed.

This all leaves the ques­tion: how do we mea­sure cor­rup­tion? Do we hold to the uni­ver­sal stan­dard of what is and what isn't cor­rup­tion hand­ed to us by a West­ern view of the world that, let's be hon­est, is rife with cor­rup­tion as the glob­al eco­nom­ic cri­sis shows? Or do we take our own de­mo­graph­ics and so­cial his­to­ry in­to ac­count and recog­nise that as our cor­rup­tion is en­dem­ic and cul­tur­al, we need in­dige­nous and cre­ative so­lu­tions to deal with it?

�2 Dr Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an is an an­thro­pol­o­gist at UWI, St Au­gus­tine