Critique of Anthropology 2015, Vol. 35(1) 3–12 ! The Author(s) 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0308275X14557095 coa.sagepub.com Article Ethics, evaluation, and economies of value amidst illegal practices Cristiana Panella Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium Kedron Thomas Washington University in St. Louis, USA Abstract This special issue focuses on illegal practices and the forms of value produced as people engage in them. Embracing a methodological orientation that attends to criminalized networks and the values they structure from the inside, the contributions included here highlight micro processes of exchange and evaluation. By linking the study of local worlds to the apprehension of wider structural and cultural dynamics and processes, the collection develops a critical perspective on formal law’s legitimizing and delegiti- mizing effects with respect to the ethical and economic values illegal activities produce. Keywords Illegality, value, evaluation, economy, ethics, intersubjectivity This special issue focuses on illegal practices and the forms of value produced as people engage in them. Official state policies, transnational governmental organ- izations, and international legal frameworks typically portray illegal activities as being bereft of moral value, economically inefficient, and ultimately threatening to the modern nation and the expectations of modernity wrapped up with its social, political, and legal construction. The articles collected here build on recent work in the study of illegality (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2006b; Heyman, 1999; Nordstrom, 2007; Reno, 2000; Roitman, 2004; van Schendel and Abraham, 2005). They dem- onstrate that values associated with modernity, morality, security, and legitimacy, as well as various kinds of economic value that are integral to the regular func- tioning of formally regulated markets, are actively produced as people engage in Corresponding author: Kedron Thomas, Washington University in St. Louis, One Brookings Drive, Campus Box 1114, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA. Email: kthomas@artsci.wustl.edu