Mistrust, 1st ed. 2019 A Global Perspective

This book examines the social practice of mistrust through the lens of social anthropology. In focusing on the citizens of the Caucasus, a region located at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, Mühlfried counters the postcolonial discourse that routinely treats these individuals, known for their mistrust of the state, as ?others.? Combining ethnographic observations presenting mistrust as an observable reality with socio-political issues from a non-Western region, Mühlfried opens up a non-Eurocentric perspective on an underexplored social practice and a major counterpoint to the well-examined social phenomenon of ?trust.? This perspective allows for a more profound understanding of pressing issues such as populist movements and post-truth politics.

Chapter 1. Distrusting Mistrust

Chapter 2. Mistrusting the System

Chapter 3. Mistrust and Complexity

Chapter 4. Radical Forms of Mistrust

Chapter 5. Mistrusting the Obvious

Chapter 6. Crisis of Mistrust

Florian Mühlfried is a writer and social anthropologist based in Vienna. His academic publications include the edited volumes Mistrust: Ethnographic Approximations (2018) and Sacred Places, Emerging Spaces: Religious Pluralism in the Post-Soviet Caucasus (coedited with Tsyplylma Darieva and Kevin Tuite) as well as the books Being a State and States of Being in Highland Georgia (2014) and Post-Soviet Feasting: The Georgian Banquet in Transition (2006, in German).

Seeks to understand the workings and consequence of mistrust as a social phenomenon

Examines how mistrust is applied to reduce social complexity and how radical mistrust manifests

Circulates around ethnographies in the Caucuses region, opening up a non-Eurocentric perspective from often-othered “experts” in mistrust