At first sight the title of our chapter may seem paradoxical and controversial, especially for a reader familiar with Francis Fukuyama's work. The main thesis of this Japanese American author in his famous book Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity is that, from a socioeconomic standpoint, individual and social prosperity cannot be created on the basis of purely personal trust relationships. as they are essentially located in the private sphere. According to Fukuyama. individual and social prosperity can only emerge in conditions of impersonal and systemic trust anchored in the social organizations and institutions that make up the public sphere. For such organizational structures, the neoliberal thinker Fukuyama focuses mainly on the democratic institutions of civil society (alliances, associations, NGOs. parties, unions, etc.), but also the state's institutions should not be left out as instruments of legitimate authority. Fukuyama's theoretical model posits an ideal-typical division between ‘high-trust’ and ‘low-trust’ societies. Although this dichotomy is rhetorically effective and to a degree scientifically plausible, from an anthropological or ethnographic standpoint it should not be received uncritically as it contains obvious as well as hidden ideas of an ethnocentric nature which should not be unquestionably accepted. Despite the undeniable heuristic significance of Fukuyama's theoretic framework, anthropologists ought to be critical of the evident ‘Orientalist’ (Said 1978) and respectively ‘Balkanist’ (Todorova 1997) connotations inherent to the dichotomy of high-trust versus low-trust societies.