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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.

Through eleven case studies conducted across India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, The Wild East examines a variety of economic sectors and business enterprises that regularly flout the law, such as coal, oil, real estate, and industrial labor. Bridging anthropology and political economy, the case studies explore how state regulative law is ignored or selectively manipulated and reveal the workings of regulated criminal economic systems in which politicians, police, judges, and bureaucrats are closely intertwined. Disrupting the existing literature on South Asia’s informal economy, The Wild East also suggests avenues for future research that will be of critical value to students and scholars of economics, anthropology, sociology, criminology, comparative politics, political science, and international relations.