Trust: A history

340 Pages·2014·1.222 MB·English

by  Jeffrey Hosking

University Press Scholarship Online
Oxford Scholarship Online
Trust: A History
Geoffrey Hosking
Print publication date: 2014
Print ISBN-13: 9780198712381
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: June 2014
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198712381.001.0001
Title Pages
(p.i) Trust
(p.ii) (p.iii) Trust
(p.iv)
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Preface
(p.v)
University Press Scholarship Online
Oxford Scholarship Online
Trust: A History
Geoffrey Hosking
Print publication date: 2014
Print ISBN-13: 9780198712381
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: June 2014
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198712381.001.0001
Preface
(p.v)
This book has been far longer in the making than I had
anticipated. Its first fruit was a Royal Historical Society Study
Day in 2004, and I am thankful to Jinty Nelson and Martin
Daunton for their encouragement in organizing it and
publishing some of the results. I owe a great deal to an
Elizabeth and J. Richardson Dilworth Fellowship for 2006–7 at
the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, which provided
much-appreciated leisure, model facilities, and lively
colleagues among whom to advance my ideas. Jonathan Israel
was a thoughtful and helpful organizer of our Institute
seminar, and has provided perceptive comments and unfailing
support ever since. I have developed and refined my thinking
over the years with seminar presentations among historians,
economists, social psychologists, and international relations
experts, and I have learnt a great deal from those who took
part. Some of those seminars were held in various parts of
Russia, under the auspices of the Moscow School of Civic
Education, and I owe a lot to the participants, and especially
to Lena Nemirovskaia and Yury Senokosov, the organizers, for
their lively engagement in discussions.
I am especially grateful to Ute Frevert, who found time to read
and comment on the whole of a close-to-final draft of the text.
David d’Avray read substantial parts of an earlier draft, and
Preface
(p.v)
offered insight, encouragement, and good cheer at times of
low morale. When I was working in Moscow, Liudmila
Chernichenko provided hospitality and friendly interest; I am
indebted to her for helping me to understand what ordinary
Russians felt during their crisis of the 1990s. Sections of
earlier drafts were also read by David Cannadine, Simon
Dixon, Eric Gordy, Ian Kershaw, Alena Ledeneva, Dominic
Lieven, Ivana Marková, Jinty Nelson, Lena Nemirovskaia,
Onora O’Neill, Robert Putnam, Susan Reynolds, Anthony
Seldon, Yury Senokosov, Robert Service, Robert Skidelsky,
Steve Smith, Alexei Tikhomirov, and Nick Wheeler—in some
cases so long ago that they may have forgotten they did so.
But all have contributed to my thinking, and I am grateful to
them all. My own failings will be only too evident, despite all
they have done.
Several libraries have been indispensable to my work,
especially those of University College London, the School of
Slavonic & East European Studies, the British Library, the
London Library, the Firestone Library of Princeton University,
and that of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.
I want to thank Oxford University Press’s anonymous
reviewers, and especially Christopher Wheeler and his
successor, Robert Faber, as editors for their encouragement,
critical support, and perceptive reading of drafts. The final
text would have been much weaker without them.
(p.vi) I owe most of all to my wife Anne and my daughters
Katya and Janet, for giving me warmth and support through
the long years of partial absence from family affairs, as well as
a general readers’ perspective and at times expert guidance
too.
Geoffrey Hosking
School of Slavonic & East European Studies
University College London
April 2014
Acknowledgements
(p.vii)
University Press Scholarship Online
Oxford Scholarship Online
Trust: A History
Geoffrey Hosking
Print publication date: 2014
Print ISBN-13: 9780198712381
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: June 2014
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198712381.001.0001
Acknowledgements
(p.vii)
I hereby record my thanks to the publishers who have given
me permission to reproduce sections of my previously
published works:
Cambridge University Press: ‘Trust and Distrust: A Suitable
Theme for Historians?’, Transactions of the Royal Historical
Society (sixth series), 16 (2006), 95–116.
Taylor & Francis: ‘Trust and Symbolic Systems: Religion and
Nationhood’, in Ivana Marková and Alex Gillespie (eds), Trust
and Conflict: Representation, Culture and Dialogue, London:
Routledge, 2012, 17–36.
Koninglijke Brill NV: ‘Structures of Trust: Britain and Russia
Compared’, in Masamichi Sasaki and Robert M. Marsh (eds),
Trust: Comparative Perspectives, Leiden: Brill, 2012, 31–68.
Modern Humanities Research Association: ‘Trust and Distrust
in the USSR: An Overview’, Slavonic & East European Review,
91/1 (January 2013), 1–25.
Introduction
University Press Scholarship Online
Oxford Scholarship Online
Trust: A History
Geoffrey Hosking
Print publication date: 2014
Print ISBN-13: 9780198712381
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: June 2014
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198712381.001.0001
Introduction
Geoffrey Hosking
In the western world there is a crisis of trust. Some of the
certainties on which till recently we based our lives suddenly
seem less certain. In the past we relied on banks to be rocks of
financial stability and integrity; but now in the United
Kingdom and European Union we have discovered that some
of our bankers are greedy and reckless, that they manipulate
interest rates to their own advantage, that they knowingly sell
customers unnecessary payment insurance policies, and that
they are bad at assessing risk, which is supposed to be their
speciality. We have learnt to distrust both their competence
and their moral sense. We used to trust governments to
oversee our financial life and to collect taxes equitably, but it
transpires that officials have been averting their gaze from tax
havens, which enable the rich to avoid paying their fair share.
The personal integrity of those who represent us is a
prerequisite of effective democracy, yet the scandal of
careless or even fraudulent expenses claims to pad out
parliamentary salaries occurred in the United Kingdom, not in
some raw and impoverished state.
Sections of the media, with at least the passive approval of
some politicians, have been breaking the law to eavesdrop on
people’s private lives and ferret out confidential information.
Introduction
Some policemen appear to have taken bribes not to investigate
the resulting felonies. Other policemen have infiltrated groups
exercising legitimate rights of protest, and have then formed
sexual relationships with trusting women in those groups; in
one or two cases the result has been a family based on deceit.
The US and UK security services, supposed to protect law-
abiding citizens, have, it turns out, been collecting personal
information on a huge scale by tapping internet
communications and mobile phones; they have been misusing
laws concerning terrorism and official secrets to harass and
detain (or attempt to detain) whistleblowers and journalists
who could embarrass the government. In all these sensitive
areas of life the trust we used to place in our institutions has
been significantly weakened in recent years. Newspaper
editorials frequently refer to a loss of trust in public life, while
politicians appeal, helplessly or speciously, for renewed trust.
In September 2013 only 46 per cent of US citizens polled by
Gallup trusted the judgement of those holding public office,1
while a mere 19 per cent trusted their representatives in
Congress.2 Even more depressingly, a MORI poll of February
(p.2) 2013 found that 18 per cent of British citizens trust
politicians to tell the truth, fewer even than trust estate agents
(24 per cent), journalists (21 per cent), and bankers (21 per
cent).3 These are all lamentable figures for professions whose
work requires public trust. The loss of trust in bankers has
been especially acute. In 1983 nine out of ten people polled by
NatCen Social Research thought that banks were well run; by
2013 that proportion was just one in five.4
The impression of a loss of trust in public institutions is, then,
well founded. But what does it mean? Much of the reportage
and resultant gossip seems to presuppose a previous golden
age in which trust was widespread. But what kind of trust?
Placed by whom in whom and for what purposes? Our casual
observations, though not altogether misplaced, lack historical
context, in fact lack any but the most rudimentary concept of
what trust is and how it functions within different societies.
This book explores what trust—and distrust—have meant in
different societies in different periods of history, so that we
can better understand what we mean when we talk today of a
loss of trust.
Introduction
It is important to make one thing clear at the outset: when we
talk about trust, we are talking of our feelings about the
future. These are often vague and indefinite, since in routine
circumstances we operate on auto-pilot. Everyday life involves
us all in webs of trust which we do not even notice. Not at
least until they suddenly go wrong. Most days I travel around
London by bus or Underground, assuming that I will not be
blown up by a bomb. This assumption is so routine and
unremarkable that it is scarcely worth dignifying with the
word ‘trust’. Except that on 7 July 2005 several bombs
exploded on the Underground, and one on a bus in Tavistock
Square, killing 52 people and wounding more than 700. Even a
very routine form of trust suddenly seemed fragile. For several
weeks the possibility of a repeat attempt was at the back of
Londoners’ minds, prompting distrust of anyone on public
transport who looked unusual or was carrying heavy objects.
Then gradually people’s suspicions faded and normal
insouciance resumed.
These are extreme circumstances, though. Let us take a more
mundane example, one in which the way we routinely trust
and distrust is influenced by social circumstances. In the
1990s a Russian tax inspector, incredulous at the high rate of
tax collection in Sweden, asked the political scientist Bo
Rothstein how on earth it was achieved. Rothstein answered
that most Swedes paid their taxes because they believed (a)
that everyone else does, and (b) that the revenue will be
honestly spent on purposes beneficial to society. The Russian
had to observe in reply that on the contrary Russians avoided
paying taxes because they believed (a) that few of their fellow
citizens paid in full, and (b) that their money would be
misappropriated by corrupt politicians and businessmen.
Rothstein calls this kind of situation a ‘social trap’.5 The only
rational thing for an individual to do in those circumstances is
to (p.3) distrust and to avoid paying tax as far as possible. But
the individually rational generates the socially disastrous:
state revenues fall short, hence schoolteachers and pensioners
are paid very late or not at all. An individual deciding to trust
and pay up would not improve the system; he or she would
simply be a sucker. Social traps produce obstinately vicious
circles of distrust, from which escape is extremely difficult.
Introduction
Let us consider an example which illustrates several modes of
trust simultaneously. For many people flying by air has
become a routine activity. Which of us, before boarding an
aircraft, checks every rivet, joint, and fuel duct in it? Or even
the qualifications of the engineers responsible for maintaining
and repairing those parts? Obviously we never do so. Yet our
lives depend on the impeccable working order of every one of
those parts, the skill and conscientiousness of the engineers
and of the pilots. The fact is, we take them on trust because
everyone else does so, and because planes very seldom crash.
Besides, to do otherwise would require us to have both time
and skills we don’t possess. We don’t ‘decide’ to board an
aircraft: we just do it. We trust the pilot because he is well
trained and has ample experience of flying, the engineers
because they are qualified in aeronautics and metallurgy, the
technicians because they know how to apply that knowledge to
the repair and maintenance of aircraft, and the airline because
it has a good safety record and a direct interest in keeping it
up. Normally we do not reflect on these reassuring facts.
There is yet another form of trust involved in the ‘decision’ to
board an aircraft. How do we know that planes seldom crash?
Because the media—television, radio, newspapers—report the
fact when they do, and that fortunately is not often. But what
if we cannot trust the media? In the Soviet Union the media
never reported plane crashes that involved the domestic
airline Aeroflot. I recall that several of my acquaintances there
would not fly on Aeroflot, as there were rumours that actually
their planes crashed quite often. There was even a little ditty
which did the rounds among sceptical potential customers:
Quickly, cheaply, without to-do,
Aeroflot will bury you.6
In flying, then, we are putting our trust in people, but not
simply as individuals. We trust pilots and engineers as
members of institutions which have certain procedures and
draw on certain systems of knowledge. We rely on journalists
who form part of honest and well-informed media
organizations. We do something similar every day of our lives,
without being aware of it. Only when a crisis occurs do we
realize that we may have been misplacing our trust.
Introduction
Time, place, and social context are crucial to the trust
assumptions on which we base all our thoughts and actions.
That is why we cannot dismiss those assumptions as trivial or
irrelevant to our real lives. If we are to understand how any
society functions we have to take account of them, even
though they are difficult to (p.4) identify. They constitute the
mental map with the aid of which individuals learn to navigate
the social terrain in which they have to operate. I have chosen
to grace these assumptions with the word ‘trust’: that word
lies at the centre of a semantic chart (see Chapter 2, ‘What is
Trust?’) which would include other words like confidence,
faith, belief, reliance, and so on. Without them we would all be
paralysed, unable to undertake any social action. As the
German sociologist Niklas Luhmann has observed, ‘A complete
absence of trust would prevent [one] even getting up in the
morning.’7
Routine, unthinking trust is, then, part of the texture of our
everyday lives, whether we recognize it or not. We have to
bear that in mind when examining our current ‘crisis of trust’,
because some of the warnings about it are bogus. In her 2002
Reith Lectures, Onora O’Neill questioned whether today’s
levels of trust are really lower than in the past. We sometimes
claim not to trust doctors, but, she pointed out, when unwell,
the great majority of us nevertheless make straight for our
doctors to get advice and help. ‘Perhaps’, she suggests,
‘claims about a crisis of trust are really evidence of an
unrealistic hankering after a world in which safety and
compliance are total, and breaches of trust are totally
eliminated.’8 We continue also in practice to rely on banks,
governments, politicians, police, journalists, and security
services to give our lives a dependable framework within
which we can live in our own way. We all need money and
physical security. We all need public servants who will
formulate policy and manage public risk. We all need an
authority to detect and prevent crime. We all need reliable
information on what is going on around us and practical ideas
about how to rectify whatever goes wrong.
In short, we are all interdependent. We all rely on most other
people doing their duty and acting ethically in order to lead
anything like a normal life. Trust is a vital ingredient in this