Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an

Writ­ing about cor­rup­tion from the pet­ty to the mas­sive in Africa, an­thro­pol­o­gist Jean-Pierre Sar­dan pro­posed five be­hav­iour­al log­ics to help ex­plain why "cor­rup­tion finds, in con­tem­po­rary Africa, such a favourable ground for its ex­ten­sion and gen­er­al­i­sa­tion, in short for its ba­nal­i­sa­tion."

He be­lieved that each log­ic was en­grained in so­cial life there as a con­se­quence of the cul­tur­al fu­sion of colo­nial­ism, post-colo­nial­ism and pre-colo­nial re­al­i­ties. His sug­ges­tion was these log­ics in­flu­ence the be­hav­iour of lo­cal ac­tors and what he termed the "com­plex of cor­rup­tion."

The five log­ics were: ne­go­ti­a­tion, gift-giv­ing, the sol­i­dar­i­ty net­work, preda­to­ry au­thor­i­ty and re­dis­trib­u­tive ac­cu­mu­la­tion. Sar­dan pro­posed that each usu­al­ly com­bined with oth­ers helps to un­der­stand how and why cor­rupt prac­tices can seem mun­dane and every­day, some­thing we in the Caribbean might al­so find true if we con­sid­er these log­ics here.

For Sar­dan the first log­ic, that of ne­go­ti­a­tion, in­flu­ences the com­plex­i­ty and em­bed­ded­ness of cor­rup­tion. Sim­ply put, cor­rup­tion in­volves bar­gain­ing and as such cor­rup­tion can be un­der­stood as ne­go­ti­a­tion and a type of trans­ac­tion rather than sim­ply il­le­gal.

For ex­am­ple, in brib­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer over a vi­o­la­tion of traf­fic law there is an open­ing con­ver­sa­tion to events. Un­less it's a sub­stan­tial amount you can­not just hand over monies with­out say­ing a word. And on a larg­er scale we can be pret­ty sure the Sec­tion 34 fi­as­co in­volved some sort of ver­bal bar­gain­ing and ne­go­ti­a­tion be­tween those in­volved. Un­der­stood in this light ne­go­ti­a­tion is an in­trin­sic dri­ving log­ic of all lev­els of cor­rup­tion, yet bar­gain­ing is al­so ba­nal; an "ease up" that breaks the rules is af­ter all a com­mon every­day be­hav­iour.

The sec­ond log­ic is gift-giv­ing. In The Gift, so­ci­ol­o­gist Mar­cel Mauss ex­plained how gift-giv­ing cre­ates so­cial bonds and oblig­a­tions. The buy­ing of a round when drink­ing or the ex­chang­ing of gifts at Christ­mas and birth­days are ex­am­ples of acts of giv­ing which en­cour­age a rec­i­p­ro­cal act and a so­cial bond.

Many types of cor­rup­tion from the pet­ty to the more se­ri­ous fall un­der the log­ic of gift-giv­ing. Think about par­ty po­lit­i­cal do­na­tions and the in­flu­ence they en­gen­der. Or on the more every­day lev­el, the lit­tle favours you do for a friend or fam­i­ly mem­ber work­ing in the civ­il ser­vice, and how when you need help in deal­ing with the State the first per­son you call is the same per­son work­ing in the min­istry who owes you that favour.

The third log­ic of cor­rup­tion is the sol­i­dar­i­ty net­work. This log­ic sug­gests cor­rup­tion is nec­es­sary for so­cial ac­cep­tance. Sol­i­dar­i­ty net­works in­clude peo­ple and friends from all lev­els of our school and work­ing lives.

They al­so in­clude our lo­cal neigh­bour­hood, church­es, fam­i­lies and more. Sol­i­dar­i­ty net­works are de­fined by the oblig­a­tions we have to oth­ers to pro­vide mu­tu­al as­sis­tance.

As Sar­dan de­scribes it, "one can­not refuse a ser­vice, a favour, a bit of string-pulling or com­pli­ance to a rel­a­tive, neigh­bour, par­ty com­rade or friend. Nor ought one refuse the same to some­one who is 'sent' by any of the above. The cir­cle of in­di­vid­u­als to whom one feels oblig­ed to ren­der ser­vices is thus as­ton­ish­ing­ly wide."

And should you not string-pull when asked this can re­sult in some sort of so­cial sanc­tion, from the mere dis­ap­point­ment of a friend to the falling out with a loved one.

The fourth log­ic is preda­to­ry au­thor­i­ty. This is the idea that peo­ple in­volved in cor­rup­tion of­ten see it as a right and ben­e­fi­cia­ry of their job. For Sar­dan, this re­al­i­ty is a pat­tern from colo­nial days and an ex­ten­sion of the ways colo­nial au­thor­i­ties used their po­si­tions in the con­text of ex­tor­tion, despo­tism and rack­e­teer­ing.

Equiv­a­lents to­day in­clude the po­lice­man tak­ing bribes, di­rec­tors dip­ping in­to spe­cial funds or pur­chas­ing ex­or­bi­tant mas­sage chairs, and politi­cians, min­is­ters and oth­er state of­fi­cials on the take, be­cause "they're worth it."

The fi­nal log­ic is re­dis­trib­u­tive ac­cu­mu­la­tion and re­minds me of the time cor­rup­tion in T&T was de­scribed to me as "so­cial mo­bil­i­ty." An­oth­er trans­la­tion might be "our time now." For Sar­den re­dis­trib­u­tive ac­cu­mu­la­tion means il­le­gal en­rich­ment and nepo­tism.

Whether it is a civ­il ser­vant or a more se­nior mem­ber of gov­ern­ment, a post of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is al­so a "juicy" post. One pro­vid­ing the hold­er with an op­por­tu­ni­ty for wealth they most like­ly will nev­er en­counter else­where. Fur­ther­more, the log­ic of re­dis­trib­u­tive ac­cu­mu­la­tion in­fers wealth should be shared around with close friends and fam­i­ly.

Now we have to be care­ful here to not read Sar­dan's be­hav­iour­al log­ics as cul­tur­al­ism. His ar­gu­ment was not that cor­rup­tion is cul­tur­al in Africa.

Rather, the re­al­i­ty he de­scribed was a his­tor­i­cal and syn­cret­ic one. The colo­nial en­counter pat­terned and pro­duced cer­tain out­comes and be­hav­iour­al log­ics.

These log­ics were syn­cretisms, ie they were not de­rived from tra­di­tion­al cul­ture, and they be­came em­bed­ded in the mun­dane and every­day.

What this all sug­gests is that in the bat­tle to re­duce cor­rup­tion long term strate­gies must in­clude chang­ing and shap­ing the be­hav­iour of our hu­man cap­i­tal from an ear­ly age.

This means fam­i­ly, ed­u­ca­tion and civ­il so­ci­ety need to im­pact how rou­tine and ba­nal many cor­rupt prac­tices have be­come and the ways we all at times jus­ti­fy their use.

n Dr Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an is an an­thro­pol­o­gist at the UWI, St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus.