Description
Only in recent years, have anthropologists paid greater attention to trust and mistrust, shaping them into distinct and clearly delineated concepts based on ethnographic records of social interaction. Since then, trust, once understood as a rather desirable state, has been translated into heuristics and actions. Distrust and suspicion, once considered antonyms of trust, became practices of exceptional detachment, but also creativity and productivity (Carey 2018; Mühlfried 2018, 2022). For this paper, I propose to accept trust and mistrust as independent but interrelated concepts of social interaction. Amid both, however, I add (mis)trust to describe what takes place in between trust and mistrust. Using conversations and interactions about offering, selecting, ordering, and serving food and drinks at a rest stop in north-western Bulgaria (2019-2021), I argue that what changes the social fabric is attributable to neither trust nor mistrust. Instead, it links to the disorientation, overwhelm, and emptiness that finds expression when shifting from an assumed regulatory inherent in mistrust to the flexibility inherent in trust. In fact, respective sensations strengthen an experience with creative potential for reading, interpreting, and changing interpersonal relationships. The paper closes with a note on how (mis)trust situated between trust and mistrust may deserve greater attention not only as a concept for explaining social interaction, but also as a guide for conducting ethnographic research.| Period | 16 Nov 2023 |
|---|---|
| Event title | AAA/CASCA Annual Meeting 2023: transitions |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Toronto, CanadaShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |
Keywords
- trust
- mistrust