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

Author/creator Umbres, Radu
Other author Oxford University Press.
Format Electronic
Publication InfoNew York : Oxford University Press, [2022]
Descriptionxvii, 228 pages ; 24 cm.
Supplemental ContentFull text available from Oxford Scholarship Online
Subjects

SeriesFoundations of human interaction
Contents Prologue: Ripping the collective apart -- Introduction to Sateni -- From the serendipity of encounter to the structure of research -- Outline of an ethnography of distrust -- The deep play of tavern distrust -- The houses of trust, the fences of distrust -- Making and unmaking kinship -- Part 1. "Brother-brother, but cheese costs money" -- Part 2. Adapting relatedness to fairness -- Death and the regeneration of trust -- The political stability of social fragmentation -- Changes in the construction of trust -- To trust or not to trust.
Abstract "Based on two years of fieldwork in a NE Romanian village, this book offers an ethnographic, interdisciplinary interpretation of social interactions in a low trust society. In Sateni, cooperation with unrelated or unfamiliar partners fails to take off while distrust permeates everyday life and cultural representations. This book argues that the costs of misplaced trust restricted Sateni moral expectations and cooperative practices to family, kinship, and friendship ties. Household autarchy and personalized morality offered an optimal strategy against political, ecological or social unpredictability. Trust appears by social agreement around cultural representations of moral behavior, persists by social interdependence, and collapses when interests misalign. Outside family-centric social relationships lies a struggle for scarce resources of land, money or prestige, with deception or predation lurking around every corner. Kinship, economy, politics, and rituals are organised around the distinction between the mutualism of trusted partners and perennial competition against the rest of the world. This ethnography analyses the intersection of ecology, history, traditions, social organisation, technology, and evolved human dispositions for cooperation and conflict which create and change a culture of distrust"-- Provided by publisher.
Bibliography noteIncludes bibliographical references and index.
Access restrictionAvailable only to authorized users.
Technical detailsMode of access: World Wide Web
Genre/formElectronic books.
LCCN 2021046215
ISBN9780190869908 (Hardback)
ISBN(ePub)

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