The Artifice of Trust

Reputational and Procedural Registers of Trust in North Indian “Informal” Finance

Bibliographic Data

ID20052225
AuthorsSebastian Schwecke (0000-0002-1015-9221, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, corresponding author)
Year2020
Pages147-178
Publication date2020-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeCHAPTER
VenueRethinking Markets in Modern India (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherCambridge University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1017/9781108762533.006
OpenAlexW3087973506
ISBN9781108762533
LanguageEN
References cited236

This chapter studies the operation of trust on financial markets in the North Indian city of Banaras (Varanasi). It emphasizes an interpretation of trust on markets as an artifact and artifice based on an experiential category of practical knowledge used to handle exchange under conditions of high uncertainty, and identifies two distinct patterns in its handling, marked as procedural and reputational registers of (handling) trust. The first case analyzes the difficulties faced by locally operating banks in the mid-twentieth century to shift from reputational to procedural registers of handling trust, using banking advertisements and other archived material. The second case outlines the shifts in the manner reputational registers of trust are used in extra-legal money lending in the wake of Indian legislation against these financial practices, contrasting an ethnographic study of contemporary practices to historical sources on money lending in the first half of the twentieth century

Business · Accounting · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Finance · Islamic Finance and Banking Studies · Social and Economic Development in India

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