Doctoral Dissertation Research: Informal Economic Practices in Post-Socialist Albania

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Graduate student, Smoki Musaraj, supervised by Dr. Hugh Raffles, will undertake ethnographic research on the multiple experiences and assessments of informal economic practices in postsocialist Albania. In recent years, an emerging global anti-corruption campaign has defined corruption as a breach of a universal market ethic of impersonal transactions. By this definition, Albania has been determined to be one of the world's most corrupt countries. Development agencies point to bribery and what they call "cultures of gift and favors" as causes for Albania's slow entry into capitalist markets. However, in Albania's socialist past, informal practices were considered appropriate strategies for circumventing state power and surviving economies of shortage. To understand how and why this history continues to affect the Albanian economy, this research will take do ethnographic research on corruption through case studies of two instances of informal transactions in Albania: participation in the pyramid schemes of 1992-1997 and the ongoing world of gifts, bribes, and favors.The researcher will undertake 12 months of field research in Albania's capital, Tirana, and the city of Vlora to invetigate two overarching questions. First, does the Albanian case provide evidence that corruption is not a universal language, but, rather, is subject to changing social contexts and political economies? Second, given the disempowering political economy of the Albanian post-socialist transition, are local residents deploying gift-and commodity-exchange jointly as ways of reclaiming economic and political agency? To answer these questions, and understand concretely the modes of action that such practices generate, the researcher will employ multiple ethnographic methods including the collection of oral narratives, participant observation, archival research, and open-ended interviews with pyramid scheme participants, a local anti-corruption media program, and an NGO.This research builds upon established social science theories of the social integration role played by gift-and-commodity-exchange and of the importance of the informal economy, to explore the local impact of the emerging global anti-corruption campaign. It will help policy makers better understand the causes and consequences of corruption. Finally, this award also contributes significantly to the education of a social scientist.