Nigeria's 419: an Interview with Daniel Jordan Smith (3/18/22) Artwork

Under The Table: An Anthropology of Corruption Podcast

We are two cultural anthropologists, Drs. Aaron Ansell and Sylvia Tidey, who write about corruption and the fight against corruption in non-Western cultural settings. Our lighthearted podcast consists of interviews with fellow experts on this topic. We try to keep it jargon-free, but we do geek out every now and then, so fair warning.

All Episodes

Under The Table: An Anthropology of Corruption Podcast

Nigeria's 419: an Interview with Daniel Jordan Smith (3/18/22)

March 18, 2022 • Aaron Ansell and Sylvia Tidey • Season 1 • Episode 2

In the second episode of the podcast series, we interview Dr. Daniel Jordan Smith, Professor of Anthropology at Brown University as well as the Charles C. Tillinghast, Jr. Professor of
International Studies. Dan is the author of a landmark ethnography of corruption, A Culture
of Corruption: Everyday Deception and Popular Discontent in Nigeria (2007). We discuss this book as well as his latest Every Household Its Own Government: Improvised Infrastructure, Entrepreneurial Citizens, and the State in Nigeria (2022). Dan explains how Nigerians understand corruption, its place in their national culture, and Nigerians' efforts to fight it. As Dan makes it clear, the “culture of corruption” in Nigeria is as much a "culture against corruption."

Daniel Jordan Smith (2007) A Culture of Corruption: Everyday Deception and Popular
Discontent in Nigeria. Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ.
Daniel Jordan Smith (2018) “Corruption and ‘Culture’ in Anthropology and Nigeria."
Current Anthropology 59(S18): S83–S91
Daniel Jordan Smith (2022) Every Household Its Own Government: Improvised
Infrastructure, Entrepreneurial Citizens, and the State in Nigeria. Princeton University
Press: Princeton, NJ.