Secrecy and Frontiers in Illegal Organ Transplantation

The chapter first considers how the issue of commodification was handled in the legislative process that produced the ban on the market for organ transplantations, the political step necessary to make this form of transaction illegal. The second part considers some of the theoretical issues related to the conceptualization of illegality within the domain of exchange, examining the role that violence, secrecy, and the frontier between legality and illegality play in the functioning of illegal transactions. In the final part, the chapter considers three cases of illegal transplantation, paying particular attention to the organizational dimension and to the work of concealment that must be done in order to cross the frontier between the legal and the illegal worlds.