Abstract

Anthropologists of policy have tended to highlight the grand organizational initiatives that are quantitative, standardized and bureaucratic. This article proposes to understand these processes using the term «industry» (as in «development industry» or «human rights industry»). Used here, «industry» is not a pejorative but a collection of features, the opposite of which could be called «craft» (local, qualitative, improvisational, etc.). This article describes the emergence of the anti-corruption industry, based on an ideology of anti-corruptionism and the agendas and unintended consequences embedded in the anti-corruption project. Anthropologists of policy can benefit by identifying those features of social problem solving that lead to an industry-style policies.