Axiomatic and Behavioural Trust (original) (raw)

Introduction: Technologies and Infrastructures of Trust

The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, 2023

What do we mean when we talk about trust? Contemporary discourses figure trust variously as a problem, an aspiration, an object of intervention, and something to be dispensed with all together. While the current moment demands new ways of thinking about trust, so too does scholarly work on trust demand similar renewal and reconsideration. To accomplish this, we depart from approaches that engage trust as a diagnostic for analysing other phenomena or objects of study, often with an emphasis on its instrumental importance. Our special issue instead approaches trust as something that itself needs to be problematised. The individual articles demonstrate the theoretical and methodological possibilities afforded through ethnographic study of the practices, technologies, and infrastructures that are often claimed as necessary to produce or sustain it.

Trust on the Line: A Philosophical Exploration of Trust in the Networked Era

2016

systems. Elements of hazard and luck can enter the performance of the representative of the system. In general, however, a representative or expert prefers to conceal how these elements might come into play, because, being in control is part of a trustworthy performance. All in all, it becomes clear that interpersonal trust and system trust are connected. Although, I was aware that the real storage of trust was located in the air traffic system that is behind the cabin crew, rather than in the cabin crew itself (if the plane malfunctioned or the pilot became unwell, they probably would not have been able to stop the inevitable, tragic event of a crash), they nonetheless are an essential part of the overall trust that I put into the system when I fastened my seatbelt. Statistical knowledge lacks the reassuring smile I needed to get on board of that plane. Trust in abstract systems provides the security we need to cope with a radically open future, but it cannot offer us the intimacy ...