Outlaw Capital: Accumulation by Transgression on the Paraguay–Brazil Border

Abstract

AbstractOutlaw economies are a key, but under‐appreciated, feature of late capitalism. With an ethnography of what one journalist called “the largest illicit economy in the Western Hemisphere” on the Paraguay–Brazil border, this article contributes empirical findings about the production of space for extralegal economies. Contributing to debates about geographies of the illicit, I theorise outlaw capital, a form of capital that negotiates profits and distributes rents through situated forms of deals, bribes, and schemes. Outlaw capital zones particular places as sites of useful transgression. Powerful spatial imaginaries then cast them out of thought, despite their connections to spaces of authorised economic practice. Outlaw capital’s diverse, flexible spatio‐economic forms benefit from explicit and tacit state support. As an example of theory building from the South, outlaw capital can help us think broadly about the power and politics of accumulation by transgression as a key logic of outlaw capital.