Trust in transactions

Trust, the foundation of cooperative living, pervades all social relationships. There is no site-institutions, organisations, nation-states-where relationships remain viable without trust. In India, trust has currently become an important issue. Citizens are concerned about the trustworthiness of policies and practices that lie at the intersection of governance and economy.
Given the complexity of the phenomenon of trustworthiness, its understanding demands a pluri-disciplinary probing into the dynamics of trust-making, breaking and retrieving. Transaction is at the centre of all economic activities conducted by a variety of economic actors. Hence, trust is a vital facilitator of transaction. Trust is perceived here as relational trust, trust developed from and sustained by relationships between the trusting and the trusted. This directs our attention away from individual dispositions to trust towards reciprocity and inter-subjectivity, which germinate and keep trust alive.
Beginning with an overview of trust analysis across disciplines, the chapters analyse a range of transaction spaces and stakeholders engaged in making, sustaining and reconfiguring trust.