The Clandestine Hands of the State: The Relational Dynamics of Police Collusion in Drug Markets

Most research on the inner workings of the modern state focuses on its legal and public interventions. Far less analytic attention has been paid to the clandestine actions and interactions of state actors. Drawing on an original legal archive of court cases in Argentina, including hundreds of pages of wiretapped communications, and on ethnographic fieldwork this talk dissects the relational dynamics of collusion between police and drug dealers and its impact on the daily life of marginalized urban spaces. After detailing common practices used to shield participants from law enforcement and secure the competitive advantage of certain groups, Javier Auyero (The University of Texas at Austin) argues that collusion is an error-filled, improvised, and interactive process that regulates illicit drug markets and shapes daily interpersonal violence.

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