Under The Table: An Anthropology of Corruption Podcast · Aaron Ansell and Sylvia Tidey

Final Podcast: The Elementary Forms of Aaron Ansell (9/8/25)

·1 hr 12 min·5 clips

Corruption, for Aaron, is 'the degradation of a sacred gradient' through transgressive rerouting of a social currency.

The eleventh and final episode of Under The Table centers on a closing interview with Aaron Ansell. The host introduces Ansell's latest book, The Elementary Forms of Corruption, Moral Imagination and Political Change in Brazil, which just came out with Howe Books a few months ago. The conversation begins with corruption in Brazil. It soon settles into the rural folk models Aaron uses to show how ordinary people make sense of moral transgression. From there, Aaron lays out a broader definition of corruption. He treats it as the degradation of a sacred gradient through the transgressive rerouting of a social currency. The phrase is abstract, but Aaron walks through the idea carefully. The conversation also comes back to comparison itself. Aaron argues that corruption can be studied across cultures if the analyst first separates domains of difference and then moves to a higher level of abstraction. He compares that move to comparing apples and oranges only after talking about fruitness rather than individual fruits. That comparative ambition becomes part of the episode's larger argument. It is not only about corruption in Brazil. It is also about what anthropology should do with foundational texts, with broad comparison, and with questions that travel across places and periods. Aaron says he sees too much particularism in the discipline and too little emphasis on comparative exploration. The host and guest then turn toward Brazil's political timeline. Aaron traces four different moments of corruption from the 1950s through the PT-led progressive era and into the Bolsonaro years. The conversation keeps returning to how orientations toward corruption help define the norms and expectations they appear to violate. It is a reflective exchange, and it gives both the theory and the history room to unfold. In the final stretch, Aaron and the host look ahead to what a post-Bolsonaro Brazil might look like. The ending is warm and plainly personal. They say goodbye to each other, to the listeners, and to the people and institutions that helped make the podcast possible. The closing thanks name Sarah Muir and Akhil Gupta, the anthropology of corruption symposium in Sintra in 2016, the Vennergren foundation, the Commonwealth of Virginia's 4VA initiative, Virginia Tech, and the University of Virginia.

As heard by us

A layered final conversation about corruption, comparison, and Brazil's political shifts.

Under The Table ends with a careful examination of corruption in Brazil, using Aaron's book to frame shifting folk ideas of moral transgression and a definition that reaches beyond Brazil itself.

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Why you'd press play

Hear Aaron Ansell turn corruption into a comparative idea about Brazil.

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