How can we trust our fellow citizens? (1999)

Trust is more than just another interesting, difficult, though only recently widely studied social phenomenon. The current rise in interest in this phenomenon (as reflected in recent writings by, among others, Fukuyama (1995), Seligman (1992), Gambetta (1988), Giddens (1990), Levi (1996), Misztal (1996), Putnam (1993), and Eisenstadt (1995, 1998)) as well as the closely related group of phenomena such as social capital, respect, recognition, confidence, associability, social cohesion, and civil society may have to do with a widely shared, though largely implicit, diagnosis of basic problems of public policy and the steering of social coordination, and ultimately the maintenance of social order itself. Specialists in the field of sociology of knowledge will have to reflect upon why it is that these perennial questions of social theory are widely addressed today in terms of such “soft” conceptual tools referring to informal and subinstitutional social phenomena.