Arts Research & Publications

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Browsing Arts Research & Publications by Department "Anthropology and Archaeology"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Customs control over illicit international trade: The impact of different forms of illegality
    (associazione nazionale universitaria degli antropologi culturali, 2015) Smart, Alan
    This article examines a process central to the anthropological understanding of the state, how smuggling persists despite diverting a large portion of the revenues critical to the operation of state organizations. Developing the author’s prior typology of basic reasons why illegal practices persist, the article argues that there are five distinct types of smuggling, related to factors such as the social legitimacy of the activity. Legitimacy appears to make control much more difficult, but the availability of profits is also a key factor that can operate in the absence of social legitimacy, and which can contribute to the corruption of state officials. The result of intensified enforcement crackdowns also differs between the types, affecting the nature of the organization of smuggling practices. I conclude that the exploration of diversity among smuggling practices demonstrates the advantages of avoiding a treatment of illegality in general terms, and to pluralize the concept to understand the diverse motivations and forms that illegal practices can take.
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    Does formalization make a city smarter? Towards post-elitist and post-humanist smart cities
    (2017-08) Smart, Alan
    This paper brings together two bodies of research on development strategies that are rarely considered together: smart city strategies (SCS), and the formalization of informality. Both are common practices for cities that want to be seen to be at the cutting edge of urban fashion. Both strategies have also been criticized as top-down and corporate friendly initiatives that undermine local vernacular practices. Smart city proponents beg the question of what makes a city smart, and in doing so neglect forms of intelligence that do not involve sophisticated technology controlled by technical and corporate elites. I argue that argue that cities can be “smarter” (if by that we mean anything other than the quantity or density of information and communication technology) in a variety of ways, including (1) citizen engagement (Leontidou 2015), (2) low-tech but effective architectural and urban design, and (3) high-tech (currently emphasizing distributed cognition through studding cities with sensors monitored with big data analytics). The paper concludes with a research agenda towards non-elitist and non-humanist smart cities.
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    Formalization as confinement in colonial Hong Kong
    (2016-08) Smart, Alan; Smart, Josephine
    The nature of informal economies is structured by conflict between governmental strategies of confinement, to places, times, and how things are done, and the transgression of these confines by informal actors in pursuit of survival or advantage. We examine the influential development program of formalization in the context of these conflicts. Informality can be formalized in two ways, by eradication and by regularization. Building on our past ethnographic research on informality, we use released confidential Hong Kong colonial government documents to explore the informal discussions among policy makers about how to respond to informal practices, and how their understanding of street vendors influences their chose of confinement strategies. While insisting on eradication for squatters, various forms of regularization were attempted for street vendors.
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    Gift to a Former Mentor: Hong Kong's Contribution to the Rise of China and the Consequences of That Rise for the Current Relationship
    (Hong Kong Sociological Association, 2015) Smart, Alan; Yeung, Godfrey; Lui, Tai-lok
    Hong Kong made a crucial contribution to China's rise, but in the last fifteen years the balance of influence has shifted. Quantitative dominance in foreign investment since reforms began in 1979 was, and apparently still is, a key part of Hong Kong's contribution to China's rise. The qualitative significance of Hong Kong's role in integrating China with the global capitalist economy through providing market knowledge and contacts was even more critical. The central importance of Hong Kong investment in the 1980s was that it provided not what China wanted (higher technology and modernization of state enterprise} but what it needed (a way to take advantage of China's vast stocks of unproductively utilized labour). However, our focus is not on Hong Kong's contribution to China's rise. Instead, we concentrate on the implications of that rise for Hong Kong.
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    Immigrant entrepreneurship and transcultural dynamics – A study of Chinese businesses in the grocery and restaurant sectors in contemporary Panama and Belize
    (2015-05) Smart, Josephine; Smart, Alan
    This paper focuses on Chinese dominance in the grocery and restaurant sectors in Panama and Belize. Drawing on data collected in 2015 and 2013 respectively, we examine emerging and expanding economic and social linkages between China and Central America. Rapid expansion of Chinese ownership in the grocery retail sector in Panama and Belize provides a focus to explore the conditions, practices and specific entanglements of transnational social, cultural, policy and economic links that shape the economic and social integration of recent Chinese immigrants in these two countries, and its impact on local people and society. First, we are interested in whether the scale of a Chinese enterprise operating across cultural boundaries influences business practices. Second, we are interested in how kinship networks, regional ties and dialectical origins affect migration decisions, and how these processes contribute to social, economic and political integration of Chinese immigrants in the host countries.