Illegal Markets

"When I Wear My Alligator Boots examines how the lives of dispossessed men and women are affected by the rise of narcotrafficking along the U.S.-Mexico border. In particular, the book explores a crucial tension at the heart of the “war on drugs”: despite the violence and suffering brought on by drug cartels, for the rural poor in Mexico’s north, narcotrafficking offers one of the few paths to upward mobility and is a powerful source of cultural meanings and local prestige.

In the borderlands, traces of the drug trade are everywhere: from gang violence in cities to drug addiction in rural villages, from the vibrant folklore popularized in the narco-corridos of Norteña music to the icon of Jesús Malverde, the “patron saint” of narcos, tucked beneath the shirts of local people. In When I Wear My Alligator Boots, the author explores the everyday reality of the drug trade by living alongside its low-level workers, who live at the edges of the violence generated by the militarization of the war on drugs. Rather than telling the story of the powerful cartel leaders, the book focuses on the women who occasionally make their sandwiches, the low-level businessmen who launder their money, the addicts who consume their products, the mules who carry their money and drugs across borders, and the men and women who serve out prison sentences when their bosses' operations go awry."

A multi-sectorial regime of protection including international treaties, conservation and security measures, demand reduction campaigns and quasi-military interventions has been established to protect rhinos. Despite these efforts, the poaching of rhinos and trafficking of rhino horn continue unabated. This dissertation asks why the illegal market in rhinoceros horn is so resilient in spite of the myriad measures employed to disrupt it. A theoretical approach grounded in the sociology of markets is applied to explain the structure and functioning of the illegal market. The project follows flows of rhino horn from the source in southern Africa to illegal markets in Southeast Asia. The multi-sited ethnography included participant observations, interviews and focus groups with 416 informants during fourteen months of fieldwork. The sample comprised of, amongst others, convicted and active rhino poachers, smugglers and kingpins, private rhino breeders and hunting outfitters, African and...

In spite of the regulation, financial assistance and securitisation of
responses to rhino poaching, rhino deaths have escalated over the
past decade. This article discusses why efforts to disrupt illegal
flows of rhino horn have been unsuccessful by honing in on
structural and functional aspects of the broader rhino horn economy.
Existing scholarly literature tends to focus on the legal–illegal
binary in markets. The focus of this article is on grey flows in
wildlife markets through an examination of rhino horn laundering
and illegal hunting in the wildlife industry. Fluid interfaces of legal,
grey and illegal flows have led to the creation of hybrid and highly
adaptable flows. It is also argued that the international regulatory
framework is not geared towards effective transnational enforcement
and lacks social legitimacy amongst key actors. The article
draws on research findings from a multi-sited ethnography, during
which the researcher followed rhino horn from the source to the
market.

A multi-sectorial regime of protection including international treaties, conservation and security measures, demand reduction campaigns and quasi-military interventions has been established to protect rhinos. Despite these efforts, the poaching of rhinos and trafficking of rhino horn continue unabated. This dissertation asks why the illegal market in rhinoceros horn is so resilient in spite of the myriad measures employed to disrupt it. A theoretical approach grounded in the sociology of markets is applied to explain the structure and functioning of the illegal market. The project follows flows of rhino horn from the source in southern Africa to illegal markets in Southeast Asia. The multi-sited ethnography included participant observations, interviews and focus groups with 416 informants during fourteen months of fieldwork. The sample comprised of, amongst others, convicted and active rhino poachers, smugglers and kingpins, private rhino breeders and hunting outfitters, African and Asian law enforcement officials, as well as affected local communities and Asian consumers. Court files, CITES trade data, archival materials, newspaper reports and social media posts were also analysed to supplement findings and to verify and triangulate data from interviews, focus groups and observations.

Central to the analysis is the concept of “contested illegality”, a legitimization mechanism employed by market participants along the different segments of the horn supply chain. These actors' implicit or explicit contestation of the state-sponsored label of illegality serves as a legitimising and enabling mechanism, facilitating participation in gray or illegal markets for rhino horn. The research identified fluid interfaces between legal, illegal and gray markets, with recurring actors who have access to transnational trade structures, and who also possess market and product knowledge, as well as information about the regulatory regime and its loopholes. It is against the background of colonial, apartheid and neoliberal exploitation and marginalization of local communities that a second argument is introduced: the path dependency of conservation paradigms. Underpinning rhino conservation and regulation are archaic and elitist conservation regimes that discount the potential for harmonious relationships between local communities and wildlife. The increasing militarization of anti-poaching measures and green land grabs are exacerbating the rhino problem by alienating communities further from conservation areas and wild animals. The third argument looks at how actors deal with coordination problems in transnational illegal markets. Resolving the coordination problems of cooperation, value and competition are considered essential to the operation of formal markets. It is argued that the problem of security provides an additional and crucial obstacle to actors transacting in markets. The systematic analysis of flows between the researched sites of production, distribution and consumption of rhino horn shows that the social embeddedness of actors facilitates the flourishing of illegal markets in ways that escape an effective enforcement of CITES regulations.

The paper provides a brief analysis of the SNA model created by Salcedo–Albaran et al (2015) of the Groenewald gang’s involvement in illegal transnational rhinoceros horn trade between southern Africa and Asia. What renders the case particularly interesting is the demonstrable interface between legality and illegality. This paper provides a brief perspective of the Groenewald gang in the broader wildlife crime context before assessing whether the case presents an exception or a common trend. In a second step, the legislative and institutional loopholes are discussed. The paper also assesses whether regulators are aware of the scheme and what measures have been taken to address this. Finally, an assessment is made whether “gray” nodes (legal players who participate in illegal activities) are dealt with in the most expedient manner and what lessons could be learnt from the model.

This paper aims to evaluate the role that personal appeals for organ donations have played throughout the history of transplantation, with particular attention to the diverse relationships such appeals have had with public policy regarding organ transplantation—at times seeming to animate policy developments, while at other times assuming an antagonistic role vis-à-vis the medical and legal establishments—and the further ethical issues implicated by the advent of social media as a tool to facilitate these exchanges. In Part I, I will recount the history of modern treatment for kidney disease, and how its development set up a paradigm that deeply entwined the federal government and the medical establishment. I will discuss the complex history of the earliest widely-used treatment for kidney failure—dialysis—paying special attention to the issues of scarcity and allocation that have complicated this treatment since the opening of the first long-term dialysis clinics in the early 1960s. I will discuss how the success of kidney transplantation created new problems of supply and demand that resemble those associated with dialysis in the past. I will recount the history of legislation related to kidney disease and organ donation, including a discussion of the role that personal emotional appeals have played in shaping public policy related to the treatment of kidney disease, even before transplantation became the preferred method of treatment. In Part II, I will provide statistics to illustrate the gravity of the issues that characterize our current system of regulating organ transplantation. Then, I will describe the values that motivate our organ donation and allocation system, and the conflicts they can engender. In Part III, I aim to further elucidate the profound moral issues implicated in organ transplantation by discussing the experience of having end stage renal disease, and relating the reality of this experience to an analysis of the rhetoric surrounding kidney transplantation in the United States. Part IV will address various issues concerning directed donations from living organ donors. First, I will discuss the notable absence of regulation with regard to organ donations from living donors, explaining why this regulatory gap exists, and how it has led to further controversy and dysfunction within the organ transplantation system. Second, I will discuss concerns unique to living kidney donation, and how the medical and legal establishments have responded to these concerns in crafting the transplant process as it operates today. Next, I will analyze trends in living donation, specifically the increasing popularity of non-related directed donations. I will discuss the ethical issues implicated in this trend, including the permissibility of directed donation, how certain types of directed donation conflict with the values that constitute the backbone of our current organ transplantation system, and the question of risk to both donor and recipient. I will then specifically address the role of social media and the Internet in facilitating this trend, and the ways in which new social media platforms to facilitate living donation may serve to exacerbate inequalities in organ allocation. In Part V, I will propose a way to harness the power of social media in order to facilitate increased donation, and make several suggestions for improving our policy regarding living organ donation.

The aim of this chapter is to ascertain the volume and price of firearms in the
criminal market of the city of Rio de Janeiro, together with the symbolic value
that they have for those who use them. It reveals the main changes in the country of manufacture, type, calibre, and make of firearms used in crime in Rio
de Janeiro, and identifies the prices at which these weapons are negotiated in
criminal markets. It compares prices in the criminal market with prices in the
legal market, and examines the variables that can interfere with variations in
prices in the criminal market, in order to identify:
• which of the firearms that are used in crimes are also used by the military
police, the civil police, or the armed forces (marines, air force, and army);
• which firearms are most valued by criminals; and
• what factors influence the differential value of firearms in the criminal market in Rio de Janeiro

The goal of this study was to provide an account of the operating mode of an important illegal market that causes considerable harm to the pharmaceutical industry and its suppliers and puts the health of consumers at risk. In this study we provide not only a review of the relevant literature, but contribute also new empirical data, which we have collected by conducting fifteen semi-directional interviews with internet-purchasers of medicines. Importantly, we have adopted for this study a perspective of economic sociology, which allows us to study the phenomenon at hand more profoundly and allows us to gain a deeper understanding of con-sumer's motivation who have exposed themselves to the risk of obtaining falsified medicines. We have found that legal ambiguity, the economic globalization and the rapid spreading of the internet makes allows producers of falsified medicines to conduct their business efficiently on a worldwide scale. On the demand side we have found, amongst other reasons, that consumers recur to internet purchases of medicines, due to the anonymity and the lower market entry barriers that it provides. Consumers tend to be younger and less wealthy. Generally speaking, our interviewees tend to be unaware of the health risks that come with internet purchases of medicines. The fight against falsified medicines has thus to be fought on both ends, the offer-as well as the demand-side.

The aim of this chapter is to ascertain the volume and price of firearms in the
criminal market of the city of Rio de Janeiro, together with the symbolic value
that they have for those who use them. It reveals the main changes in the country
of manufacture, type, calibre, and make of firearms used in crime in Rio
de Janeiro, and identifies the prices at which these weapons are negotiated in
criminal markets. It compares prices in the criminal market with prices in the
legal market, and examines the variables that can interfere with variations in
prices in the criminal market, in order to identify:
• which of the firearms that are used in crimes are also used by the military
police, the civil police, or the armed forces (marines, air force, and army);
• which firearms are most valued by criminals; and
• what factors influence the differential value of firearms in the criminal market
in Rio de Janeiro.

This book's main theme is the study of informal work in Brazil. It combines sociological theory, historical analysis and statistical data, to provide an overview of the configuration of the processes of informalization at work. It still tries to be a contribution that helps to understand the persistence of social inequality in the labor market.
ISBN: 9788598885636. P.:280

Internet-based crime is a looming problem. Some crimes, such as the sale of drugs and guns and the distribution of child abuse imagery, have shifted into the applications, forums and chatrooms of the Internet. Other crimes, such as data breaches and identity theft, ransomware and distributed denial of service attacks, are launched via the infrastructure of the network. Cybersecurity policies designed to counter these activities have predictably different effects across the various types of Internet-based crime. Dark Web indexing and Internet service provider botnet mitigation strategies, for example, affect some forms of cybercrime more than others. In particular, this paper outlines how Internet-based crime varies along a continuum from crime in the applications of the Internet to crime via the infrastructure of the system. It then shows how cybersecurity strategies have differential effects across the various cybercrime types.

The expansion and entrenchment of insecurity, organized crime and violence in Latin America has involved the participation of public officials. Without this participation, it would be impossible to create the necessary niches of impunity to enable the growth of organized crime and violence. Using a hermeneutic-interpretative approach, this essay shows how the norm of legality has lost its moral persuasive power as a categorical imperative while certain illegalities have acquired social and political legitimacy. The purpose of this article is to reflect on the under-examined impact of cultural values on criminality. It also describes how the dominant narratives surrounding illegality and policies designed to reduce criminality are limited by a lack of consideration of the way that broader cultural values are permissive of corrupt and illegal behaviour. This article considers current social norms, interests, values, ideas of success, and the lack of legitimate pathways to achieve prosperity and social recognition to provide a fresh perspective on the discourse surrounding illegality. For the purpose of illustration this essay uses examples, evidence, interviews and discourses drawn from the context of Argentina. Far from being an anomaly, illegality is a fundamental part of both social inter-relations and has become institutionalised as a part of the behaviour of state entities. Illegality has become not only the norm but is seen as an effective and legitimate means to gain social success and prestige.

This paper describes the development of the illegal cigarette market in Germany, outlining its basic characteristics and the conditions that have contributed to its emergence and continued existence. Data were obtained from various sources, including media reports, government documents, interviews conducted with law enforcement officials, informants, and a representative of the German association of cigarette manufacturers.

To submit an individual paper, you must include an abstract. Abstracts for submissions to mini-conferences like should be no longer than 1000 words.  All submissions need to include 3 key words. https://sase.org/about-sase/conference-submission-guidelines_fr_25.html

Session details: The intersection of morals and economic forces provides a productive niche to study the blurring of cultural factors, economic trends, and values-driven behavior. In the same age as ethical investing, which can be seen as one redefinition of legitimacy, we also have an explosion of formerly taboo goods and services in a different direction. From the increasing access to pornography to the newly legal US gay wedding industry, or the exclusion of alcohol and tobacco firms in investing, we see wide redefinition of what is, and what is not, considered acceptable for consumers, firms and society. This theme focuses on redefinition and movement of moral and ethical lines and the factors that influence these shifts, from culture to regulation to potential profits.

This chapter discusses the potential for a better understanding of variations in the patterns of criminal cooperation, taking the illegal cigarette market as an example. The first section explains why the market for contraband cigarettes has been chosen for a case study of organised crime. In the second section, a general classificatory scheme is proposed for analysing criminal structures, while in the third section, this classificatory scheme is applied to the illegal cigarette market.

In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, organized crime was branded as the major threat to human security in the twenty-first century. As politicians, “securocrats” and practitioners geared up to deal with the newly identified threat to world peace, the events of 9/11 turned the world’s attention to terrorism. While terrorism in its various permutations continues to dominate security agendas, the harmful effects of organized crime on human security, economic development and political governance are equally concerning. In fact, organized crime and illegal markets are an absorbing area of study for economic sociologists. But why should economic sociologists research a phenomenon that has been clearly identified as a security issue? What are the weaknesses in current theoretical thinking about organized crime and how can economic sociology contribute theory as well as policy to current debates? The following article touches on recent conceptual work done in the Illegal Markets rese...

In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, organized crime was branded the major threat to human security in the twenty-first century. As politicians, “securocrats” and practitioners geared up to deal with the newly identified threat to world peace, the events of 9/11 turned the world’s attention to terrorism. While terrorism in its various permutations continues to dominate security agendas, the harmful effects of organized crime on human security, economic development and political governance are equally concerning. In fact, organized crime and illegal markets are an absorbing area of study for economic sociologists. But why should economic sociologists research a phenomenon that has been clearly identified as a security issue? What are the weaknesses in current theoretical thinking about organized crime and how can economic sociology contribute theory as well as policy to current debates? The following article touches on recent conceptual work done in the Illegal Markets research group of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (MPIfG) and provide ideas for nuanced research that tackles “organized crime” as an actor in both legal and illegal supply markets.

This study seeks to update and expand our understanding of the perceptions and purchasing patterns of smokers of single cigarettes (‘loosies’) in disadvantaged urban areas. Semi-structured guides were used in thirteen focus groups with 67 self-identified adult smokers from the South Bronx section of New York City in summer 2013.
There is wide availability of single cigarettes in the South Bronx, with legitimate stores overwhelmingly being the preferred venue for purchases. Single cigarettes are sold at higher per-unit prices than illicit packs. However, buyers of single cigarettes can achieve cost savings compared to legal, fully taxed cigarette packs. Apart from cost-savings, smokers opt for single cigarettes to reduce their personal cigarette consumption. There is a general perception of market resilience despite law enforcement intervention. However, law enforcement has a limiting
effect on access to single cigarettes outside of an individual smoker's immediate neighborhood.
The findings suggest that single cigarette sales are an important element of the illicit cigarette market in disadvantaged communities which should not be ignored in future research on the nature and extent of cigarette tax avoidance and evasion.

This study explores the history of the illegal production, distribution, and smuggling of cigarettes in mainland China. Data were obtained from a content analysis of 931 media reports retrieved from LexisNexis for the time period 1975 until 2010, and from other open sources. The illegal cigarette trade first emerged in the form of violations of state tobacco monopoly regulations. In the course of the restructuring of the legal tobacco sector, which occurred under external political pressure to open the Chinese market to foreign competition, an illegal cigarette industry emerged which at first primarily produced fake Chinese brand cigarettes for the domestic black market. At the same time, China became a destination country for smuggled genuine Western brand cigarettes. It was only after effective crackdowns against cigarette smuggling and domestic distribution channels in the late 1990s that the Chinese illegal cigarette industry shifted to exporting large numbers of counterfeit Wes...

Although economic sociology emphasizes the role of social networks for shaping economic action, little research has examined how network governance structures affect prices in the unregulated and high-risk social context of online criminal trade. We consider how overembeddedness—a state of excessive interconnectedness among market actors—arises from endogenous trade relations to shape prices in illegal online markets with aggregate consequences for short-term gross illegal revenue. Drawing on transaction-level data on 16 847 illegal drug transactions over 14 months of trade in a ‘darknet’ drug market, we assess how repeated exchanges and closure in buyer–vendor trade networks nonlinearly influence prices and short-term gross revenue from illegal drug trade. Using a series of panel models, we find that increases in closure and repeated exchange raise prices until a threshold is reached upon which prices and gross monthly revenue begin to decline as networks become overembedded. Findi...

The expansion and entrenchment of insecurity, organized crime and violence in Latin America has involved the participation of public officials. Without this participation, it would be impossible to create the necessary niches of impunity to enable the growth of organized crime and violence. Using a hermeneutic-interpretative approach, this essay shows how the norm of legality has lost its moral persuasive power as a categorical imperative while certain illegalities have acquired social and political legitimacy. The purpose of this article is to reflect on the under-examined impact of cultural values on criminality. It also describes how the dominant narratives surrounding illegality and policies designed to reduce criminality are limited by a lack of consideration of the way that broader cultural values are permissive of corrupt and illegal behaviour. This article considers current social norms, interests, values, ideas of success, and the lack of legitimate pathways to achieve prosperity and social recognition to provide a fresh perspective on the discourse surrounding illegality. For the purpose of illustration this essay uses examples, evidence, interviews and discourses drawn from the context of Argentina. Far from being an anomaly, illegality is a fundamental part of both social inter-relations and has become institutionalised as a part of the behaviour of state entities. Illegality has become not only the norm but is seen as an effective and legitimate means to gain social success and prestige.

This study examines the scope of the cigarette black market in a socioeconomically deprived inner-city area, taking the South Bronx in New York City as a case study. Data were obtained from a systematic collection of discarded cigarette packs (n=497) in 30 randomized census tracts. It was found that 76.2% of cigarette packs discarded in the South Bronx in Spring 2011 were not legally sold within New York City because they either had no combined New York State/New York City tax stamp, the tax stamp was counterfeit, or a tax stamp from a jurisdiction other than New York City was affixed.

This article introduces a Crime, Law & Social Change special issue on rethinking organised crime, collective violence and insecurity in contemporary Latin America. The five contributions, which among them cover the cases of Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico, address the puzzle of why and how in the midst of the world’s most serious crime and violence crisis ‘stability’ and ‘political order’ are nonetheless maintained. Taking a critical distance to conventional scholarship on these problems, the present collection of papers shifts the focus from one on how democratic regimes and formal institutions of the state are affected to a broader one that puts the spotlight on the ‘real politics’ and ‘real governance’ of crime and violence in the region. Cultural aspects of the ‘collapse of legality’, the holding power of informal institutions and the workings of ‘crimilegal orders’ and ‘criminalized electoral politics’ are explored through variegated conceptual and methodological approaches drawn from political science, criminology, sociology, social psychology, cultural studies and investigative journalism.

According to Ritter (2005), the term "illegal drug market" is widely used in drug-related research, however, meaning different things to different researchers. The most influential fact on the lack of research in this area is nonexistence of a unified / unique definition of the drug market (Degenhardt et al., 2004), but the levels and their definitions differ from study to study. Another significant problem is the lack of information on the structure of the distribution process in different countries, the way in which a particular market responds to changes in supply and demand, and the concrete impact of measures aimed at reducing supply and demand for drugs (Natarajan and Hough, 2000). Understanding the drug market is important for a number of reasons, mostly in helping design drug prevention through specific projects, sanctioning and other efforts to enforce laws related to drug abuse. The main goal of this research was to collect data on the structure and dynamics of t...

Paraguay is often described as a territory of drug trafficking, smuggling and commercial piracy. However, the country remains understudied by academics researching criminality and illegal markets. Pedro Juan Caballero, a city located on the northern border with Brazil, is an interesting case study to illustrate how legality and illegality merge in Paraguay to create hybrid social orders. The daily life in the city, one of the best places in the world for cultivating marijuana, unfolds between the higher homicides rates and some of the lowest levels of common criminality in Paraguay. Far from being a matter of state weakness, the expansion and tolerance of illegal activities is framed within a cluster of order that combines both rational legal practices and neo-­patrimonial norms. The presence and roles of state institutions are re-signified, generating alternative hierarchies, practices and values to supply social, political and economic outcomes. Through in-depth interviews with key informants, ethnography visits and analyses of aggregated data, this paper describes the hybrid order of Pedro Juan Caballero by tallying the incentives that encourage social and institutional tolerance of illegality and describes how illegal practices create access to goods, services, protection and expectations not provided by the legal framework.

Keywords: social order, drug trafficking, illegal markets, social tolerance, Paraguay