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Banker's Trust and the Culture of Banking among the Nattukottai Chettiars of Colonial South India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

David Rudner
David Rudner
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Harvard University
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Extract

The notion of ‘banker's trust’ has a paradoxical quality, like ‘burning cold’ or ‘military intelligence.’ Common sense (another paradoxical notion) tells us that bankers have no trust. Perhaps this explains the appeal of Marxist and Weberian assumptions that capitalist economies tend to destroy pre-capitalist social formations based on trust. From the classic perspective, ‘primordial’ social ties mandate relations of trust (or something like them) in kin groups and castes only so long as the members of these groups do not operate directly—as bankers do—within a capitalist economic system.

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Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , July 1989 , pp. 417 - 458
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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