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Trust: A History offers a new perspective on the ways in which trust and distrust have functioned in past society, providing an empirical and historical basis against which the present 'crisis of trust' can be examined, and suggesting ways in which the concept of trust can be used as a tool to understand our own and other societies.
List of contents
Introduction; 1 A society of maximum distrust: the Soviet Union in the 1930s; 2 Why and how to study trust; 3 Religion; 4 Commercial trust and money; 5 Nations and symbols of trust; 6 Religion and commercial strust in the modern world; 7 Why trust the nation-state?; Conclusions
About the author
Geoffrey Hosking is Emeritus Professor of Russian History at University College London. A Fellow of the British Academy and an Honorary Doctor of the Russian Academy of Sciences, he was BBC Reith Lecturer in 1988. He has written numerous books on Russian history and culture, including Beyond Socialist Realism, A History of the Soviet Union, and Russia and the Russians. He has taught at the Universities of Essex, Wisconsin-Madison, Cologne and Cambridge. He has served on the councils of the Britain-Russia Centre and Index on Censorship, and at various times on the editorial boards of the Slavonic & East European Review, Journal of Contemporary History, Nations and Nationalism, Ab Imperio, and Rossiiskaia istoriia (the principal Russian Academy journal on Russian history).
Summary
Trust: A History offers a new perspective on the ways in which trust and distrust have functioned in past society, providing an empirical and historical basis against which the present 'crisis of trust' can be examined, and suggesting ways in which the concept of trust can be used as a tool to understand our own and other societies.
Additional text
Hosking's discussion presents intriguing potential for further investigations ... It is important work.
