Trust and Mistrust in the Economies of the China-Russia Borderlands

In the proposed volume the authors aim to contribute to the anthropological understanding of trust in juxtaposition to the economy and the state. They focus on the specific economic exchanges and activities on the Sino-Russian border, agents of which might have - and do have - different reasons to mistrust each other. Activities at this location, we argue, destabilize the usual ideas of marginality and scale. This border could be considered geographically peripheral, and yet through lengthy trade routes (e.g. linking production in South China with consumption in Siberia, or the effects of new customs regulations that route goods via Moscow) it is also a nexus with a Eurasian reach.