Crypto-colonialism is the condition of countries that, while expressing pride in having never been formally part of Western colonial empires, nevertheless experienced much of the humiliation and exploitation of the “true” colonies, in ways that reverberate today. One effect of crypto-colonialism has been to impose a Western-inspired veneer of technocratic governance over older political structures. Yet these structures persist, sometimes in what appear to be ghostly echoes from the past. By comparing these phenomena in Greece (a country stereotypically associated with the emerge of the European ideal) and Thailand (a country greatly attached to a highly orchestrated indigenous past), we can begin to understand the significance for their future paths of the persistence of these spectral forms and the political alignments that their presence reinforces.
 
Michael Herzfeld is professor of anthropology at Harvard University and the author of nine previous books, including, most recently, The Body Impolitic: Artisans and Artifice in the Global Hierarchy of Value.

The seminar is co-arranged by the Department of Social Anthropology and Stockholm Center for Global Asia, Stockholm University.