Social Science Research Council

Paris, July 2000 

This CRN held its first workshop in collaboration with the Center for the Study of International Relations (CERI) in Paris, in July 2000. The workshop focused on two dissimilar regions, Southern Africa and the zone encompassing N.E. Burma, Southern China, and N. W. Thailand, usually termed the "Golden Triangle." It compared the flows of drugs, arms, labor and ideas that pass through, originate and terminate in these regions. The workshop sought to test some of the theoretical propositions embedded in the project statement above. There were four papers on each region and a complementary theoretical presentation. Workshop participants came from Thailand, South Africa, Canada and the US and were joined by the international steering committee of the Illicit Flows project. The workshop will lead to special issues of two journals -- one in French and one in English. The intent is to expose a work in process by beginning to disseminate emerging thinking, thus broadening participation, even as next steps in the project are being planned.August, 2002

Vancouver, August 2002

This workshop (Aug.30-Sept 2) focused on establishing a systematic comparative approach to understanding of transnational flows that escape the control, or lie beyond the purview, of states. Workshop participants came from Europe, Asia, Latin America, Canada and the US. Presentations included work on "blood diamonds" in Sierra Leone and Liberia undertaken by a NGO campaigner, a comparison of Ecuadorian migration to Europe and the US, an ethnography of coca use in Northern Argentina, an examination of the spread of subversive sexualities in Southeast Asia, and theoretical reflections on the social and legal construction of licit and illicitness within global processes of economic and cultural trade.