Professor Dame Caroline Humphrey will give a lecture entitled “Disjunct Moral Economies at the Russia-China-Mongolia border” on the 26th February at 5 p.m. in the Edmund Leach room at the Department of Social Anthropology, Cambridge.

Abstract: Mistrust, no less than trust, can be intrinsic to positive conceptualisations of moral economy. In a critique of certain approaches to global trade, Professor Humphrey will in this lecture suggest that researchers should interest themselves in the moral economies of states and governments as well as those of local actors. Accounts of three contrasting operations – historical as well as ethnographic studies of business transactions at the Russia-China-Mongolia border – will serve as examples of this argument. In each of them business and state operations intersect, comprising a different formulation of trust / mistrust related to practical interactions and socio-cultural separations.

All are welcome; registration not required.