Hibernating

Sorry, this blog is currently hibernating as there are growing uncertainties whether I will be able to further pursue my research (funding issues). If yes, the site will be reorganised and relaunched in the foreseeable future.

Common Sense vs. the Sociological Perspective on Corruption

For some time now I have subscribed to google alerts on ‘corruption’ and some related terms like ‘clientelism’ and ‘mafia’. This means that google sends me an email once a day and tells me about the latest web entries containing the respective key word. It makes interesting reading as many of the articles I get are highly charged with emotion and are rather moralising than really informative.

Just a few headlines to give you an impression:

Armed separatists and ecologists unite against fears of a paradise …
guardian.co.uk – UK
… in a nebulous atmosphere of omertà (code of silence), clientelism and protection rackets, and where property speculation is the fast money earner. …

Hintergrund: Der Wahl-Fahrplan 2009
WELT ONLINE – Germany
Nato’s secretary general says Afghan government corruption is as much to blame as insurgents for instability. Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe calls on …

TALCO MAZELTOV CD bei eBay.de: Reggae, Ska Dub (endet 07.01.09 21 …
A fight we always thought to be very important is the one against political immunity and clientelism; being left wing is a value that is not involved with …

euro|topics – Current
Political life is rife with clientilism, cronyism and corruption. … So the young are revolting against a society in which they feel alien, …

Complaint Box for Corruption in Leh (Ladakh), India / watchsmart – flickr.com (CC)

Many people who I meet and tell about my research are immediately interested in the subject (this is a rather unlikely experience for a sociologist, at least here in Germany) and some volunteer their own stories of corruption. Recently my GP had a lot so say about corruption in the German health care system and outlined to me how the big pharmaceutical companies were out to bribe him, only to meet his heroic resistance. I have heard of the goings-on behind the scenes of big, global companies and the reality of careers in politcal parties – all without having to press for information (this, too, is rather rare in the life of a sociologist).

The topic of corruption seems to be of great interest to many people, and even in a country like Germany that is considered to be (and as far as I can see is actually) relatively free of it (with an emphasis on relatively), most people have at least some experience of it, either first or second-hand.

Common sense has a lot to say about corruption. We know that it is a bad thing, that it is everywhere and that you have to do it yourself if you want to be successful in life and all the people who are have done it. That, at least, is what a lot of pe0ple keep telling me.

As a sociologist, however, my outlook is different and this blog will therefore be informed by a somewhat divergent approach. I am not interested in moralising or complaining or revolting against corruption. My emphasis is on understanding what it actually is. Why do people moralise, complain and revolt? And how did society get to this stage, considering that for millions of years clientilism was the norm? On a personal level I agree, of course, with those who think that corruption is not good and should be fought on all levels. But as a sociologist I don’t want my personal interest to cloud my professional judgment. Therefore, this blog will be relatively free of indignation, and full of fascination for a cultural concept many aspects of which still await a full exploration.

Getting off the blocks

In the unlikely event of somebody already following this blog, I can assure you that despite no new articles for some time, the project is still well alive. There might not have been changes on the surface, but in the background a lot of deliberation and  planning has been going on. In the coming weeks and days, this will result in a couple of pages: Two Worlds, which I have just put online, What is Corruption?, Corruption and Ethics and finally a Mission Statement that will help me define the purpose of this blog.

There is definitely no need for another news blog on corruption. Many of those already exist and they are doing a great job. But few of them take a (sociological) background look at events. I therefore  feel that this project might be quite an interesting contribution to the corruption discourses going on. But that, of course, will be on you, the reader, to judge.

But enough of self-reflection – it is time to get off the blocks! I am certainly looking forward to doing so in the coming weeks and months.

Finding a Name

Sociology of Corruption might tell the user what this blog is about (or is supposed to be about), but it is not exactly a very inventive name. Sooner or later it will therefore have to go and make place for a new one. At the moment I just cannot think of a good name and I am grateful for any helpful suggestions.

The current adress http://corruptionresearch.wordpress. com is also just a stand-in and will in time be replaced by a more fashionable one – hopefully containing the blog’s new name.

Picture: my backgarden

courtesy of RainerSturm / pixelio.de

Finding my Voice

Just a short note to kick this off: My name is Martin Booker and this is the private Blog of a PhD student of sociology who tries to understand and explain corruption, its causes and effects. In the coming days, months and years, I will use this platform to bring some of my thoughts to paper and hopefully connect to people who are interested in the topic and/or do some research on it.

I do not yet know how much – if any – of my immediate research I will publish here. This page will probably turn out to become a place where I take down notes and dwell on ideas that I find worth mentioning. I think it will have a certain journalistic twist to it as well, as I like reporting on current issues – only with sociological accuracy and organised logic. I will also post Videos and link to interesting articles I will have read online.

I am founder, editor and author of the well-established German-language website homosociologicus.de – this blog here is therefore part of the growing homo sociologicus empire (Hehe, that sounds important). Also visit sizilienexkursion08.de – a site where we published the results of some field work in Sicily (in German) and my friend and co-author at hs Stefan’s ecologicaleconomy (English, but still under construction).

The header image is from this impressive picture I found at pixelio.de, named “Mafia” – courtesy of photographer Mike Nottebrock.