Description
Book SynopsisAnalyzes trust as a fundamental issue of social relationships. This book asks whether trust - which critics identify as essential in creating a cohesive society - can continue to serve this role. It shows that trust is losing its unifying power because the individual, is being reduced to a sum of group identities and an abstract matrix of rules.
Trade Review"Adam Seligman's impressively thoughtful book suggests that the logic of waning trust in the late modern period may be to return the human subject to a premodern condition."--John Gray, The Times Literary Supplement (London) "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
Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction3Pt. 1The Problem of Trust111Trust, Role Segmentation, and Modernity132Agency, Civility, and the Paradox of Solidarity443Trust and Generalized Exchange75Pt. 2The Representation of Trust and the Private Sphere1014Public and Private in Political Thought: Rousseau, Smith, and Some Contemporaries1035The Individual, the Rise of Conscience, and the Private Sphere: A Historical Interpretation of Agency and Strong Evaluations1246Spheres of Value and the Dilemma of Modernity147Conclusion169Notes177Bibliography207Index225
