Trust : a history

Resource Information

The work Trust : a history represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Vancouver Public Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Trust : a history

Title remainder

a history

Statement of responsibility

Geoffrey Hosking

Creator

• Hosking, Geoffrey A

Author

• Hosking, Geoffrey A

Subject

• Trust

Language

eng

Summary

Offers a new perspective on the ways in which trust and distrust have functioned in past societies, providing an empirical and historical basis against which the present crisis can be examined, and suggesting ways in which the concept of trust can be used as a tool to understand our own and other societies. Geoffrey Hosking argues that social trust is mediated through symbolic systems, such as religion and money, and the institutions associated with them, such as churches and banks. Historically these institutions have nourished trust, but the resulting trust networks have tended to create quite tough boundaries around themselves, across which distrust is projected against outsiders. Hosking also shows how nation-states have been particularly good at absorbing symbolic systems and generating trust among large numbers of people, while also erecting distinct boundaries around themselves, despite an increasingly global economy. He asserts that in the modern world it has become common to entrust major resources to institutions we know little about, and suggests that we need to learn from historical experience and temper this with more traditional forms of trust, or become an ever more distrustful society, with potentially very destabilising consequences

Cataloging source

NLE

Dewey number

302.1

Index

index present

LC call number

BF575.T7

LC item number

.H67 2014

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography