Whom Can We Trust?: How Groups, Networks, and Institutions Make Trust Possible

Preface

Preface R ENEWED INTEREST in understanding the role of trust in society over the past few decades has been inspired by several major works in sociology, political science, and history. Diego Gambetta’s 1988 edited volume was an interdisciplinary effort to explore the meaning of trust both theoretically and empirically. James Coleman in 1990 and Robert Putnam in 1993 gave trust a key role in their work on social capital , and the historian Francis Fukuyama impelled trust to center stage in 1995 with the publication of his widely circulated book Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity. Many theoretical discussions of the role of trust in society followed in the immediate wake of these publications , but empirical investigations that clarified the specific role trust played in varied social settings were less numerous. In what sense was trust central to social order, as some had claimed, and, if it was, under what conditions? What work does trust do in securing social, political, and economic transactions, and when? What are the limits to trust as a mechanism of social control and when do social organizations rely on trust in the absence of monitoring and sanctioning? What are the cultural roots of trust and trustworthiness and how do they differ? What are the consequences of distrust and how is trust restored when violated? These and other questions required sustained investigation using multiple methods in various contexts. The Russell Sage Foundation responded by funding a working group and a program of research on the role of trust in society from 1995 until 2005 to facilitate multidisciplinary work on this important topic. The full list of funded projects is available on the foundation’s website, but the chapters in this volume report on some of the most significant findings from these investigations. Although only about a third of the projects are represented here, we believe that this volume provides a window into the types of phenomena analyzed by teams of researchers funded under this initiative from across the social sciences, including psychology, anthropology , political science, economics, and sociology. xi The commitment of the Russell Sage Foundation to sustained efforts of this type make it unique in the world of social science funding. The well-known success of an earlier (and continuing) initiative on behavioral economics is a testimony to the significance of this funding strategy. We thank Eric Wanner, president of the Russell Sage Foundation, for his foresight and his unusual capacity to identify topics of central importance in the social sciences, which he is willing to fund. We also thank the Center for Advanced Study in the Social and Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) where various investigators, including the editors of this volume, were able to bring some of this work to fruition. In particular, we acknowledge the Rockefeller Foundation, which funded a team residency for the editors in Bellagio at the beginning of this project and subsequently an important conference on distrust. These fellowships and awards resulted in several of the books published in the trust series. Finally, we thank the authors whose work is included in this volume for their commitment to writing chapters that clearly summarize some of the most important findings from their research investigating trust in varied settings, ranging from the streets of Chicago and the offices of physicians in California to the countryside of Kenya, the countries of Mexico and Argentina, and even the dusty archives of small villages in France. xii Preface ...