This proposal deals with money, trust and deception in post-socialist Romania in the context of spectacular accumulation elicited by mutual-aid games, especially Caritas (Cluj-Napoca, 1991-1995). I investigate the ways in which mutual-aid games insinuate themselves into the everyday life of people, their conversations, exchanges, and sociality. Looking into the implicit, taken-for-granted forms of trust that structure everyday life (Garfinkel 1967), I seek to explore the interactional, situational, and indexical aspects of trust that allow people to persuade themselves and others to invest money in mutual-aid games. The main goal of this research project is to produce a theoretically informed analysis of trust in the early 1990s in Romania. At the same time, the NEC fellowship will provide an excellent opportunity to continue my doctoral work by expanding and eventually publishing it as a book.

A full-length study is available here.