Living with distrust : morality and cooperation in a Romanian village / Radu Umbres.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Umbres, Radu, author.

Series:

Foundations of human interaction.

Foundations of Human Interaction

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ethnology--Fieldwork.

Ethnology.

Interdisciplinary approach in education.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (249 pages)

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2022]

Summary:

Based on fieldwork in the Romanian village of Sateni, this book offers an ethnographic, interdisciplinary interpretation of social interactions in a low trust society. Radu Umbres makes sense of the villagers' worldview, one divided between strong moral relationships and deep suspicion towards the rest of the village society.

Contents:

Cover

Series

Living with Distrust

Copyright

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Prologue: Ripping the collective apart

Introduction to Săteni

I.1. From the serendipity of encounter to the structure of research

I.2. Outline of an ethnography of distrust

1. The deep play of tavern distrust

1.1. Reputation and vigilance in dramaturgical tournaments

1.2. Cues and inferences in selective social intercourse

1.3. Exploitation and generosity

1.4. Domination as proven reputation

1.5. Luck and agency

1.6. The importance of vigilant minds

1.7. Society as competition

2. The houses of trust, the fences of distrust

2.1. The ecology and ideology of a domestic mode of production

2.2. Autarky as safe atomization

2.3. Domestic survival against authoritarian collectivism

2.4. Conspiratorial flexibility and opportunistic collaborationism

2.5. Keeping evil away from home

2.6. Whitewashed reputations and imaginative suspicions

2.7. The household as family coordination and interdependence

2.8. A society of households

3. Making and unmaking kinship

Part I: "Brother-​brother, but cheese costs money"

3.1. Sibling equity and fair marriages

3.2. The many problems of dividing property between relatives

3.3. Marriage as unity and separation

3.4. Moral readjustments in the domestic cycle of reproduction

3.5. Partner choice in "holding" and "not holding on to kin"

Part II: Adapting relatedness to fairness

3.6. Changing families, changing weddings

3.7. Calling out and keeping kinship accounts

3.8. Choosing relatives by moral obligations

3.9. A fair replacement for blood

3.10. The importance of being kin

4. Death and the regeneration of trust

4.1. Being there: The morality of reckoning death

4.2. Death and final reputations.

4.3. Funeral symbols of mutuality

4.4. The society of the dead

4.5. The drama of private graves . . .

4.6. . . . and the tragedy of the common graveyard

4.7. The life and death of trust

5. The political stability of social fragmentation

5.1. The making of a political entrepreneur

5.2. Ritual politics and political transactions

5.3. Smart thieves and political idiots

5.4. Local governance as patrimony

5.5. Plus ça change . . .

5.6. . . . plus c'est la même chose

5.7. The moral reproduction of political markets

6. Changes in the construction of trust

6.1. The hurdles of economic distrust

6.2. The road to entrepreneurship

6.3. Pricing old trust for new houses

6.4. Fairness between the short term and the long term

6.5. Creating trust under social and technological uncertainty

6.6. Cheaters and superpartners

6.7. The ethical fashioning of the entrepreneurial self

6.8. Moral inclinations and moral environments

7. To trust or not to trust

7.1. Living in a culture of distrust

7.2. The weight of history

7.3. The flexibility of personalized trust

7.4. The future of cooperation and morality

7.5. The reasons for distrust

Notes

References

Index.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0-19-086993-3

0-19-086992-5

0-19-086991-7