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A work of collaborative ethnography that investigates extortive practices across the globe.

What makes an offer impossible to refuse? Combining original ethnography with compelling storytelling, this book traces the social life of extortion across Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, China, Ecuador, Guatemala, India, Italy, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, and the United Kingdom. The research is grounded in collaborative and comparative ethnography conducted by a team of anthropologists, bringing together fieldwork from across the world to reveal how extortive logics shape different domains of life and following the circulation of threats and the distribution of intimidation across society.

The result is a gripping read about the ordinariness of extortion beyond conventional organized crime and mafia spheres. The chapters document how the strength of extortion lies in the gradual and complicit inclusion of individuals and populations within relationships that are simultaneously attractive and violent—capturing the overlapping dimensions of compulsion and choice that define so many of today's livelihoods. In doing so, this book illustrates the dynamics of coercion, force, and consent, and offers a fresh perspective on economic violence that moves away from exclusive legalistic definitions of extortion.

Over the past fifteen years in Mexico, more than 450,000 people have been murdered and 110,000 more have been disappeared. In Sovereignty and Extortion, Claudio Lomnitz examines the Mexican state in relation to this extreme violence, uncovering a reality that challenges the familiar narratives of “a war on drugs” or a “failed state.” Tracing how neoliberal reforms, free trade agreements, and a burgeoning drug economy have shaped Mexico’s sociopolitical landscape, Lomnitz shows that the current crisis does not represent a tear in the social fabric. Rather, it reveals a fundamental shift in the relationship between the state and the economy in which traditional systems of policing, governance, and the rule of law have eroded. Lomnitz finds that power is now concentrated in the presidency and enforced through militarization, which has left the state estranged from itself and incapable of administering justice or regaining control over violence. Through this critical examination, Lomnitz offers a new theory of the state, its forms of sovereignty, and its shifting relation to capital and militarization.