Aaron Ansell and Sylvia Tidey
11 episodes listed below
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We are two cultural anthropologists, Drs. Aaron Ansell and Sylvia Tidey, who write about corruption and the fight against corruption in non-Western cultural settings. Our lighthearted podcast consists of interviews with fellow experts on this topic. We try to keep it jargon-free, but we do geek out every now and then, so fair warning.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Under The Table shows how corruption takes shape through local moral judgments, political language, and the institutions designed to control it.
Aaron Ansell and Sylvia Tidey keep asking who gets to define corruption and what disappears when public morality hardens into an audit, transparency program, or campaign slogan.
A gift or a bribe? Aaron and Sylvia make you care who gets to decide.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A careful, historically grounded look at corruption, translation, and the aftermath of a post-socialist financial collapse.
The episode uses Albania's post-socialist pyramid and Ponzi schemes as a path into how corruption gets named, translated, and argued over across politics, kinship, media, and global institutions.
A measured look at corruption, anti-corruption, and the institutions that keep reshaping both.
The discussion treats corruption as something more slippery than a slogan, moving from elite institutions to anti-corruption reforms and the anthropology of studying upward.
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.
A sharp look at transparency and corruption that favors careful argument over slogans.
Anu Sharma's conversation with Aaron Ansell and Sylvia Teide treats anti-corruption in India as a question of transparency, the legibility of the state, and the gray zones that keep bureaucracy workable.
A grounded look at Hong Kong housing, guanxi, and the long reach of Alan Smart's ideas.
The episode works through corruption in Hong Kong housing with a steady hand, moving from squatter clearance and public housing to gifts, bribes, and guanxi.
Research conversations without the shortcut.
Long-form questions for serious curious minds.
Policy books, examined with care.
Serious China scholarship, lecture by lecture.
Human origins, close to the evidence.
Anthropologist Alan Smart discusses his research on guanxi, informality, and corruption in Hong Kong and China, exploring how social connections blend friendship and interest, the role of informality in government, and insights from his new book on squatter housing.
Anthropologist Chris Shore discusses corruption in elite contexts, critiquing narrow definitions and the growth of the anti-corruption industry.
Anu Sharma discusses her research on transparency, anti-corruption, and good governance in India, exploring the links between women's empowerment, state accountability, and the rise of populist politics.
Aaron Ansell and Sylvia Tidey speak with Dr.
The eleventh and final episode of Under The Table centers on a closing interview with Aaron Ansell.
Kent anthropologist Italo Pardo says legal abuses of power are received at the grassroots as 'most insidious and disruptive' because they have the 'credentials of legality'.
Harvard anthropologist Michael Herzfeld discusses his book Subversive Archaism, which compares a Cretan village called Zonyana with an old Bangkok community that redeploys the state's heritage discourse to challenge state power.
Hetherington explains that for many rural Paraguayans, "voting meant goats," and that urban reformers found such patronage "icky."