'We are all Chavez'. Charisma as an embodied experience

The current chaotic post-Chávez political and economic scenario affords a little certainty: Chávez is still very present in the everyday life of contemporary Venezuelans. Chávez as a martyr, as the second Bolívar, as a saint, as a spirit, is becoming part of the religious and social life of a great number of people. Despite being dead, he continues to shape Venezuelan revolutionary selves. An examination of Chávez’s legacy through the lens of divine kinship provides important clues to understanding how charisma is embodied in people and things and circulates through networks of kinship (and fictive kinship) from gods, spirits, and ancestors to democratically appointed leaders and their ordinary followers. El caos que permea el panorama político y económico post-Chávez ofrece cierta certeza: Chávez todavía está muy presente en la vida cotidiana de los venezolanos. Chávez se está convirtiendo en parte de la vida religiosa y social de un gran número de personas: Chávez como mártir, como el segundo Bolívar, como santo, como espíritu. A pesar de que está muerto, Chávez sigue moldeando la personalidad revolucionaria venezolana. Un examen del legado de Chávez a través del prisma del parentesco divino nos ofrece claves importantes para entender cómo el carisma se encarna en la gente y en los objetos y circula a través de redes de parentesco (y parentesco ficticio) de los dioses, espíritus y ancestros a los líderes elegidos democráticamente y sus seguidores

Electoral manipulation and impunity: ethnographic notes from Uttar Pradesh

This article explores how electoral manipulation intersects with issues of impunity in a constituency in Western Uttar Pradesh, North India. By casting electoral manipulation as a tool to obtain, maintain and enhance impunity this article argues that there is often more at stake in manipulating elections than simply winning. More specifically it shows how an holistic ethnography of ‘electoral seasons’ sheds light on the kinds of authority and legitimacy produced by the visible non-punishment of electoral manipulations and in so doing offers new insights into ongoing debates in the anthropology of power, leadership and the law

The bandit and his myths the collective production of violent charisma [Introduction]

From Pablo Escobar to Phoolan Devi, myths featuring bandits (more or less socially-responsible) have grown in popularity and reach and are disseminated through digital media. Constructed through processes of transcultural bricolage, these myths celebrate bandits, gangsters and mafia politicians, dead or alive, as effective weapons in the present. At the same time, they project an uncertain posthumous future for the bandit. In these myths, fact and fiction are fused to give birth to powerful fictional realities that exceed the life of these figures, giving them sometimes unexpected post-mortem careers. This introduction reveals how these fictional realities are elaborated through a process of ‘myth scripting’ that becomes constitutive of bandits’ authority. This concept is also our ethnographic object: we explore an everyday fabrication of seduction, fascination and terror indissociable from the bandits’ capacity to spur others to action that is essential to the criminal political economy

Parivar Raj (Rule of Family): The Role of Money and Force in the Making of Dynastic Authority

This article explores the making of a political dynasty in action in a district in western Uttar Pradesh. The founder of the dynasty is a dabang: a self-made violent political entrepreneur. It is argued that the figure of the dabang offers a special ethnographic entry point to contrast forms of power that are achieved versus forms of power that are acquired (inherited) and examines the existing tensions between paternalistic and autonomous models of power. Importantly, such exercise highlights the challenges that dabangs have in cultivating their individual charismatic authority and simultaneously establishing their Parivar Raj (rule of family) by using force and money. On the whole, the presented case study helps us to reflect on the very diverse ways in which dynasties form and work according to the type of authority that is passed through generations

Protection Rackets and Party Machines: Comparative Ethnographies of “Mafia Raj” in North India

Control over means of violence and protection emerge as crucial in much research on corruption in non-South Asian contexts. In the Indian context, however, we still know little about the systems of organised violence that sustain the entanglement of crime, capital and democratic politics. This timely comparative ethnographic piece explores two different manifestations of what our informants identify as “Mafia Raj” (“rule by mafia”) across North India (Uttar Pradesh and Punjab). Drawing on analytical concepts developed in the literature on bossism and “mafias”, we explore protection and racketeering as central statecraft repertoires of muscular styles of governance in the region. We show how a predatory economy together with structures of inter- and intra-party political competition generate the demand for and the imposition of unofficial and illegal protection and shape different manifestations of Mafia Raj. In doing so, the paper aims to contribute to debates on the relationship between states and illegalities in and beyond South Asia

Brushing with Organized Crime and Democracy: The Art of Making Do in South Asia

This article explores the performances of a particular category of young men often derogatively referred to as “chamchas” (sycophants) who are using the art of making do (jugaad) by exploiting and bluffing links with powerful political networks and political parties, as well as friendships with strongmen and their criminal crews. Crucially, the comparative ethnography across India (western Uttar Pradesh) and Bangladesh (Sylhet) introduces readers to the “contact zone” where legality, semi-legality, and organized criminal systems meet. In so doing, the article unravels the working of the democratically elected “Mafia Raj.

The central role of Italy in the spatial spread of USUTU virus in Europe

USUTU virus (USUV) is an arbovirus maintained in the environment through a bird-mosquito enzootic cycle. Previous surveillance plans highlighted the endemicity of USUV in North-eastern Italy. In this work, we sequenced 138 new USUV full genomes from mosquito pools (Culex pipiens) and wild birds collected in North-eastern Italy and we investigated the evolutionary processes (phylogenetic analysis, selection pressure and evolutionary time-scale analysis) and spatial spread of USUV strains circulating in the European context and in Italy, with a particular focus on North-eastern Italy. Our results confirmed the circulation of viruses belonging to four different lineages in Italy (EU1, EU2, EU3 and EU4), with the newly sequenced viruses from the North-eastern regions, Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia, belonging to the EU2 lineage and clustering into two different sub-lineages, EU2-A and EU2-B. Specific mutations characterize each European lineage and geographic location seem to have shaped their phylogenetic structure. By investigating the spatial spread in Europe, we were able to show that Italy acted mainly as donor of USUV to neighbouring countries. At a national level, we identified two geographical clusters mainly circulating in Northern and North-western Italy, spreading both northward and southward. Our analyses provide important information on the spatial and evolutionary dynamics of USUTU virus that can help to improve surveillance plans and control strategies for this virus of increasing concern for human health