Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: Corruption Discourse and the Performance of Politics 1

Part I. From Caliphate to Federal Republic

1. A Tale of Two Emirs: Colonialism and Bureaucratizing Emirates, 1900-1948 27

2. The Political Time: Ethnicity and Violence, 1948-1970 63

3. Oil and the "Army Arrangement": Corruption and the Petro-State, 1970-1999 105

Part II. Corruption, Nigeria, and the Moral Imagination

4. Moral Economies of Corruption 153

5. Nigerian Corruption and the Limits of the State 188

Conclusion 219

Notes 231

Bibliography 257

Index 277

About the Author

Steven Pierce is Senior Lecturer in Modern African History at the University of Manchester. He is the coeditor of Discipline and the Other Body: Correction, Corporeality, Colonialism, also published by Duke University Press, and the author of Farmers and the State in Colonial Kano: Land Tenure and the Legal Imagination.

Reviews

"Moral Economies of Corruption is not only rich history, but also a theoretically insightful analysis that has much to offer beyond its particularism. Scholars interested in corruption in other parts of Africa, and in other regions of the world, will find much to ponder and appreciate." -- Daniel Jordan Smith * American Ethnologist *
"[T]his is a superb and path-breaking book. Through meticulous attention to detail, it builds an argument that is as important as it is compelling. And, ironically, it is by refusing to compromise on historical and cultural specificity that it makes its most important contribution to understanding and engaging critically and constructively with a global discourse." -- Kate Hampshire * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute *