Society for Cultural Anthropology

Oral Presentation Session

When the Market Becomes Law: On Contract and Obfuscation in Berlin’s Water Works

Presenter(s)

• AM

  Andrea Muehlebach

  University of Toronto

This paper explores the history of Berlin’s Water Works from the perspective of late 19^th and late 20^th century private contracts. How did these contracts function as vehicles for high-yielding profits for foreign investors while also, across a period of about 150 years, becoming objects of subterfuge, suspicion, rumor, wonder, and political intrigue? I present a history and theory of the financial frontier as a zone of contractual opacity and secrecy, but also as a zone where the revelation of these contract’s and their open secrets had unprecedented public political effects. At stake is the question of who makes the law – markets or states?