Brooke Harrington | Dartmouth College
Over a century ago, Georg Simmel noted that the need for secrecy unites the nobility with criminal gangs in their quest for power and resources. This insight finds its most vivid contemporary expression in the offshore financial system, where trillions in private household wealth – totaling at least 12 percent of global GDP – circulate largely outside the rule of law. The talk will offer a sociological analysis of the agency and mechanisms underlying this phenomenon, drawing on both a long-term ethnography of the offshore system and Big Data network analysis of its characteristics – including its hidden vulnerabilities.
