Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-9q27g Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-16T20:23:25.089Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Women smuggling and the men who help them: gender, corruption and illicit networks in Senegal*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 September 2012

Cynthia Howson
Cynthia Howson*
Affiliation:
Department of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, University of Washington, Tacoma, WA 98402-3100, United States of America
*
Email: chowson@uw.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper investigates gendered patterns of corruption and access to illicit networks among female cross-border traders near the Senegambian border. Despite a discourse of generosity and solidarity, access to corrupt networks is mediated by class and gender, furthering social differentiation, especially insofar as it depends on geographic and socio-economic affinity with customs officers, state representatives and well-connected transporters. Issues of organisational culture, occupational identity and interpersonal negotiations of power represent important sources of corruption that require an understanding of the actual dynamics of public administration. While smuggling depends on contesting legal and social boundaries, the most successful traders (and transporters) strive to fulfil ideal gender roles as closely as possible. Ironically, trading on poverty and feminine vulnerability only works for relatively affluent women.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 3 , September 2012 , pp. 421 - 445
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I am grateful to the editor and two anonymous referees as well as Carlos Oya, Kate Meagher, Lynn Thomas and Pierre Ly for helpful comments on earlier drafts. Further thanks are due to my research assistant, Ousmane Ndao. Remaining errors and omissions are my own.

References

REFERENCES

Chef de poste, Customs, Keur Ayib, Kaolack Region, 18.3.2008.

Dembe, driver, Nioro, Kaolack Region, 29.2.2008.

Horse-cart driver, Kaolack Region, 4.3.2008.

Indicateur, Kaolack city, 23.3.2008.

Officer, Customs field office, Kaolack Region, 18.3.2008.

Omar, Ministry of Customs, Dakar, 10.4.2008.

Alhassan-Alolo, N. 2007. ‘Gender and corruption: testing the new consensus’, Public Administration and Development 27, 3: 227–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anders, G. 2004. ‘Like chameleons: civil servants and corruption in Malawi’, Bulletin de l'APAD 23–4: 43–67.Google Scholar
Anders, G. 2005. ‘Civil Servants in Malawi: cultural dualism, moonlighting and corruption in the shadow of good governance’, PhD dissertation, Leiden University.Google Scholar
Bako-Arifari, N. 2006. ‘“We don't eat the papers”: corruption in transport, customs and the civil forces’, in Blundo, & de Sardan, Olivier, Everyday Corruption and the State, 177–224.Google Scholar
Blundo, G. 2006. ‘Dealing with the local state: the informal privatization of street-level bureaucracies in Senegal’, Development and Change 37, 4: 799–819.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blundo, G. & Olivier de Sardan, J. P.. 2003. ‘La corruption au quotidien en Afrique de l'Ouest: approche socio-anthropologique comparative: Bénin, Niger et Sénégal’, Working paper 17, Mainz: Johannes Gutenberg Universität.Google Scholar
Blundo, G. & Olivier de Sardan, J. P., eds., with Bako-Arifari, N. & Alou, M. T.. 2006. Everyday Corruption and the State: citizens and public officials in Africa. London: Zed.Google Scholar
Cissé, M. 2007. ‘Les “Ndioganes” dans le Saloum: dans le secret des maîtresses de la fraude à petites doses’, L'Observateur (Dakar), 16.11.2007.Google Scholar
Cleaver, F. 2002. ‘Reinventing institutions: bricolage and the social embeddedness of natural resource management’, European Journal of Development Research 14, 2: 11–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coulon, C. 1981. Le Marabout et le Prince: Islam et pouvoir au Sénégal. Paris: A. Pedone.Google Scholar
Devlieger, C. 2010. ‘Disabled traders at “Beach Ngobila”: issues of identity and state, technology, disability social networks, and gender’, paper presented at the 2010 ABORNE conference, ‘Cross-Border Trade in Africa’, Basel, 8–11 September.Google Scholar
Dollar, D., Fisman, R. & Gatti, R.. 2001. ‘Are women really the “fairer” sex? Corruption and women in government’, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 46, 4: 423–9.Google Scholar
Fassin, D. 1985. ‘Du clandestine à l'officieux: les réseaux de vente illicit des medicaments au Sénégal’, Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines 25, 98: 161–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferreira, C., Engelschalk, M. & Mayville, W.. 2007. ‘The challenge of combating corruption in customs administrations’, in Campos, J. E. & Pradhan, S., eds. The Many Faces of Corruption: tracking vulnerabilities at the sector level. Washington, DC: World Bank, 367–86.Google Scholar
Filmer, D. & Pritchett, L.. 2001. ‘Estimating wealth effects without expenditure data – or tears: an application to educational enrollments in states of India’, Demography 38, 1: 115–32.Google ScholarPubMed
Goetz, A. M. 2007. ‘Political cleaners: women as the new anti-corruption force?’, Development & Change 38, 1: 87–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guérin, I. 2006. ‘Women and money: lessons from Senegal’, Development and Change 37, 3: 549–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hesselbein, G., Golooba-Mutebi, F. & Putzel, J.. 2006. ‘Economic and political foundations of state-making in Africa: understanding state reconstruction’, Crisis States Working Paper 2, 3, available at: www.crisisstates.com/Publications/wp?WPseries2/wp3.2.htm.Google Scholar
Lund, C. 2006. ‘Twilight institutions: public authority and local politics in Africa’, Development and Change 37, 4: 685–705.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meagher, K. 2001. The Bargain Sector: economic restructuring and the nonfarm sector in the Nigerian savanna. Farnham: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Meagher, K. 2003. ‘A back door to globalisation? Structural adjustment, globalisation & transborder trade in West Africa’, Review of African Political Economy 30, 95: 57–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ntseane, P. 2004. ‘Being a female entrepreneur in Botswana: cultures, values, strategies for success’, Gender and Development 12, 2: 37–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olivier de Sardan, J. P. 1999. ‘A moral economy of corruption in Africa?’, Journal of Modern African Studies 37, 1: 25–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olivier de Sardan, J. P. 2008. ‘Researching the practical norms of real governance in Africa’, Discussion Paper 5, Africa Power and Politics Research Programme.Google Scholar
Perry, D. L. 2005. ‘Wolof women, economic liberalization, and the crisis of masculinity in rural Senegal’, Ethnology 44, 3: 207–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Selboe, E. 2008. ‘Changing continuities: multi-activity in the network politics of Colobane, Dakar’, PhD dissertation, University of Oslo.Google Scholar
Smith, D. J. 2007. A Culture of Corruption: everyday deception and popular discontent in Nigeria. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Sung, H. E. 2003. ‘Fairer sex or fairer system-gender and corruption revisited’, Social Forces 82, 2: 705–25.Google Scholar
Swamy, A., Lee, Y., Azfar, O. & Knack, S.. 2001. ‘Gender and corruption’, Journal of Development Economics 64, 1: 25–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Titeca, K. & De Herdt, T. 2010. ‘Regulation, cross-border trade and practical norms in West Nile, north-western Uganda’, Africa 80, 4: 573–94.Google Scholar
Vijayalakshmi, V. 2008. ‘Rent-seeking and gender in local governance’, Journal of Development Studies 44, 9: 1262–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
World Bank. 2001. Engendering Development through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources, and Voice. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar