Speaking of Trust

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A01=Teodor Zidaru
Author_Teodor Zidaru
Category=JKSR
Category=KCM
Category=QR
economics
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Kenya
mutual aid
power
religion

Product details

  • ISBN 9781350301115
  • Weight: 1040g
  • Dimensions: 154 x 236mm
  • Publication Date: 18 Sep 2025
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
  • Publication City/Country: GB
  • Product Form: Hardback
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This open access book examines the often overlooked entanglements and affinities between emerging models of formal and informal finance and welfare with longer-running religious structures and concerns.

In Kenya, mutual aid has long mediated microcredit contracts and the social contract between citizens and the state. In effect, mutual aid has been organized in ways that contributed to mistrust in financial and state institutions as well as among families and neighbours. Nevertheless, diverse mutual aid arrangements have thrived and proliferated, not least because collaborating parties actively recognize the influence of invisible third parties such as God or Satan. The resulting forms of trust and mistrust range from the contractual to the mutual and everything in-between. Together, they highlight how speaking of trust in a language of religious faith sustains possibilities for contingency, creativity, and change alongside the reproduction of pre-existing inequalities and moral prejudices.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by UKRI.

Teodor Zidaru is Associate Lecturer in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews. Previously he taught anthropology at King’s College London and the London School of Economics.

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