CHAPTER 4: Trust and Distrust: Dialogical Ways of Self–Other–Culture Relationships

Trust is a multi-faceted human phenomenon which is of a relational nature. It takes many forms, as subjective elaborations and established skills of social actors. Some dimensions are tacit, others reflected; some occur at macro-social levels and others take place in micro-interaction (Marková, Linell, & Gillespie, 2008). The three preceding chapters, by Grossen and Salazar Orvig, Aronsson and Osvaldsson, and Tileagӑ, elaborate such insights, treating trust in discourse as an ethical dilemma at the core of medical confidential circumstances (Grossen & Salazar Orvig), as confronted with blaming in a social-care assessment situation (Aronsson & Osvaldsson), and when people have to come to terms with their past, and bring into the open matters that could never before be discussed in the public sphere, as in post-communist Romania (Tileagӑ). All three studies broaden our perspective of the relationship between trust and distrust. They demonstrate that trust embodies a human capability of maintaining efforts to remain trustful and confident despite the fact that others show that there may be many reasons for being a distrustful or non-confident person. In advancing this perspective, I shall focus on two points that can be interesting for several intertwined theoretical, methodological and ethical levels of research and professional activities.