ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author addresses the way how informal dynamics, and the itineraries they took in a number of both religious and secular settings he have investigated, have become legitimate because of the very presence, sometimes active, of those who were supposed to prevent those transactions from taking place. With reference to informal payments in Ukrainian hospitals, A. Polese showed how monetary payments became ‘central to the persistence of informality’ as they ‘cement social obligations’. Informality penetrated new loci once alien to the world of book launching, including the launching of sacred books. Public officers had, in any case, already publicly represented their action as legitimate when they spoke, some in high uniform, standing at that very walnut table, thanking the host for the invitation and for the papers on that book they were going to listen to soon.
