Mistrust: Ethnographic Approximations

Description

Scholars have long seen trust as a foundational social good. We therefore have ample studies on building trust in free markets, on cultivating trust in the state, and on rebuilding trust through civil society. The contributors to this volume, instead, take a step back. They ask: Can mistrust ever be more than the flip side of trust, more than the sign of an absence or failure? By looking ethnographically at what a variety of actors actually do when they express mistrust, this volume offers a richly empirical trove of the social life of mistrust across a range of settings. Cover......Page 1 Table of Contents......Page 6 Introduction. Approximating Mistrust......Page 8 Trusting the Math and Mistrusting Humans. How Politically Sensitized Engineers of Cryptographic Systems Cope with Ontological Insecurity in the Digitally Augmented Life-World......Page 24 How Not to Fall in Love. Mistrust in Online Romance Scams......Page 50 When Stories Seem Fake. Tacit Mistrust in Domestic Violence Counselling in South Africa......Page 72 Intervention. Essay on the Anthropology of the Fiduciary......Page 94 Mis(sing) Trust for Surviving. Confronting Complexity and the Un/Known in Makeni, Northern Sierra Leone......Page 106 Mistrust During the Ebola Epidemic in Guinea......Page 130 Mistrusting as a Mode of Engagement in Mediation. Insights from Socio-Legal Practice in Rwanda......Page 148 Intervention. Doubt, Suspicion, Mistrust ... Semantic Approximations......Page 170 Don’t Trust, Don’t Fear, Don’t Beg......Page 180 Suspicion and Mistrust in Neighbour Relations. A Legacy of the Soviet Mentality?......Page 202 Afterword. Mistrust after Truth?......Page 220 Acknowledgments......Page 226 Authors......Page 228