Trust is a Verb!: A Critical Reconstruction of the Sociological Theory of Trust

Gil Eyal; Larry Au; Cristian Capotescu

doi:10.6092/issn.1971-8853/19316

Authors

Gil Eyal Department of Sociology, Columbia University https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7194-3864
Gil Eyal is a Professor of Sociology and Director of the Trust Collaboratory at Columbia University (USA). He is the author, most recently, of The Crisis of Expertise (Polity, 2019), and co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Expertise and Democratic Politics (Oxford University Press, 2023).
Larry Au Department of Sociology, The City College of New York https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0642-9134

Larry Au is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at The City College of New York, CUNY (USA). His research examines the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in the production of biomedical knowledge, and asks how clinicians and scientists can better serve their patients and the public.
Cristian Capotescu INCITE, Columbia University https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8671-1679

Cristian Capotescu is Associate Director of the Trust Collaboratory at Columbia University (USA). He also directs participatory research at the Center for Smart Streetscapes (CS3) at Columbia Engineering and co-leads its Public Interest Technology research team. Cristian holds a PhD in History from the University of Michigan (USA, 2020).

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/19316

Keywords:

Trust, sociological theory, trust surveys, ethnomethodology

Abstract

What is trust and how should it be studied? In this essay, we seek to reconstruct the sociological theory of trust and propose an alternate strategy focused on analyzing the skillful nature of the “trust methods” employed by ordinary people. Instead of treating trust as a static property that can be measured by close-format survey questions, we conceptualize trusting as a skillful practice that is highly context-dependent and attuned to temporal variables such as speed, duration, sequence, and timing. To illustrate this approach, we draw on interviews with Long COVID patients focusing on how they account for who, what, when and how they distinguish responsible trust from blind faith.

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Trust is a Verb!: A Critical Reconstruction of the Sociological Theory of Trust

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