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Review
The Problem of Trust is a demanding, closely reasoned, scholarly work.... It is well worth the time of patient, attentive readers. -- Carl L. Bankston III, Commonweal
The historical and religious perspective that Mr. Seligman brings to the contemporary debate about trust and civil society would greatly deepen our understanding of the way these issues are playing out in American society today. -- Francis Fukuyama, The Washington Times
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The problem of trust in social relationships was central to the emergence of the modern form of civil society and much discussed by social and political philosophers of the early modern period. Over the past few years, in response to the profound changes associated with postmodernity, trust has returned to the attention of political scientists, sociologists, economists, and public policy analysts. In this sequel to his widely admired book, The Idea of Civil Society, Adam Seligman analyzes trust as a fundamental issue of our present social relationships. Setting his discussion in historical and intellectual context, Seligman asks whether trust--which many contemporary critics, from Robert Putnam through Francis Fukuyama, identify as essential in creating a cohesive society--can continue to serve this vital role.
Seligman traverses a wide range of examples, from the minutiae of everyday manners to central problems of political and economic life, showing throughout how civility and trust are being displaced in contemporary life by new "external' system constraints inimical to the development of trust. Disturbingly, Seligman shows that trust is losing its unifying power precisely because the individual, long assumed to be the ultimate repository of rights and values, is being reduced to a sum of group identities and an abstract matrix of rules. The irony for Seligman is that, in becoming postmodern, we seem to be moving backward to a premodern condition in which group sanctions rather than trust are the basis of group life.
The existence of trust is an essential component of all enduring social relationships. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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The book tracks the sociological role of trust in the alchemy of our being.
Trust requires that we develop personal responsibilty for our attitudes and actions toward one another. The problem Seligman identifies,is the corrosion of cohesive trust through the use of legislative control.
Seligman intially shows what has been termed trust by writers such as Fukayama is not trust but a form of familiarity. The trust that Fukayama's social capital is built on is a learned confidence in the behaviour of others. Someone living in a culture can learn that that others can be guaranteed to perform their roles in a predictable manner and so can learn that there is little risk in reliance on their actions.
Seligman contrasts this familairity and confidence with what he terms 'trust.' Seligman shows that participants in modern society play far more roles than they did in the past and that of necessity there will be conflict in the imperatives of these roles. In Western society this has led to the privileging of the concept of an individual who lies behind all of these roles.
With refererence to the work of Enlightment philosophers, Seligman shows that this precludes the use of familiarlity to reduce risk in social itneraction. Interactions cannot be predicted from past behaviour. The indvidual move from being a role filler to an auronomous agent which negotiates behavior that is not controlled by role expecatation. Trust is that property which at the limits where role expectations fail can allow agents to rely on the good faith of others.
Seligman shows how trust is not a necessary result of the process of role multiplication and fragmentation but is an historical fact resulting from the forces in western culture. h He discusses how the current forces of identity politics, political correctness aand the like are attempts to eliminate trust with its acceptance of risk. These are attempts to define and control all apsects of behavior by removing the capability of agency from the individual. The indvidual with them is defined by the external attributes of his/her role.
To Selignam trust is about the acceptance of risk. It can only be found in the beahvior of autonomous agents. It contrasts to familiarity which can be used to learn the actions of role fillers whose actions are determined by the expectations of their roles. Identiy politics is a direct attack on the idea of the individual.
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