Mackenzie on Guilt-Free Consumption in a Transnational Criminal Market’

Glasgow's Simon Mackenzie comments on the antiquities market and considers what allows "Guilt-Free Consumption in a Transnational Criminal Market":

in this global market we are witnessing the playing out of a common social story in which a powerful group of market capitalists and end-consumers employs a range of sociologically developed linguistic and performative strategies to obfuscate or legitimise their exploitation of a group of less powerful victims. If that is the context for the so-called debate about illicit antiquities, crime-reduction strategies involving consumer education seem considerably more difficult to achieve than has been widely recognised in policy discussions on transnational crime.

Recognized by whom? This blog has been exposing those obfuscations and difficulties with precisely those "performative strategies" of artefact hunters, collectors and dealers since 2008.

Mackenzie, S. (2013), ‘Conditions for Guilt-Free Consumption in a Transnational Criminal Market’, European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research