Multiple Modernities in Bulgaria: Social Strategies of Capitalist Entrepreneurs in the Agrarian Sector

Th e article focuses on trust/mistrust relations, strategies of cooperation, and emerging confl icts in the period of establishing capitalist reforms in Bulgaria aft er 1989. In this frame, trust building, as a key challenge for a successful transformation process, is analysed as a premise for cooperation and social cohesion in the process of reforming governance, establishing local institutions, rebuilding civil society, and validating the acknowledged human and natural potential of a “failing” i.e. “fragile state” like Bulgaria. Of specifi c signifi cance is the analysis of agency in which individuals possess mainly personalised types of trust and cooperation and are suspicious about systemic trust. Th e analysis of the empirical materials reveals that the agents involved in present capitalist agriculture do not follow the abstract model proposed by transition/consolidation theories but rather they confi rm the validity of the multiple modernities approach proposed by S.N. Eisenstadt.