Department seminar: Miriam Driessen
The Department of Social Anthropology is happy to announce the upcoming seminar with Dr. Miriam Driessen, University of Oxford. The title of the lecture is "Laughing about corruption in Ethiopian-Chinese encounters".
Main content
Seminar paper
The growing Chinese presence in Ethiopia has inspired lively debate, often with an edge of humor. Corruption is one of the recurring topics in amusing narratives that circulate on and off the Chinese-run construction sites that have emerged across the Ethiopian landscape over the past two decades. Shared by Ethiopians and Chinese alike, humorous narratives of corruption are, however, double-edged. They can be read as a critique of corruption and the corrupt other, and also as an invitation to engage in corruption. Drawing narrator and protagonist closer to one another, these narratives nudge at the possibility of corruption, and familiarize the audience with cultural codes of conduct, thereby enabling and sustaining corrupt regimes.
About the lecturer
Miriam Driessen is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies and Jesus College, University of Oxford. She is trained as an anthropologist.