Book Launch

Conveners: Dr Nicolette Makovicky & Dr David Henig

Scholars of post-socialist politics and society have often used 'favour' as a by-word for corruption and clientelism. The contributors to this volume treat favours, and the doing of favours, as a distinct mode of acting, rather than as a form of 'masked' economic exchange or simply an expression of goodwill. They argue that favours do not operate 'outside' or 'beyond' the economic sphere, but rather that they constitute a distinct mode of action which has economic consequences - without being fully explicable in terms of transactional cost-benefit analysis. 

Casting their comparative net from post-socialist Central, Eastern, and South Eastern Europe; to the former Soviet Union, Mongolia, and post-Maoist China, the contributors to this volume show how gratuitous behaviour shapes a plethora of different actions, practices, and judgments across religious and political life, imaginative practices, and local moral economies.

Please see here for more on the launch event https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ssees/fringe-centre/events and here for more information on the volume and reviews :https://global.oup.com/academic/product/economies-of-favour-after-socialism-9780199687411?cc=gb&lang=en&