https://doi.org/10.25058/20112742.n59.11
Jairo Emiro Cuenu Cabezas
Fernando Bravo Copete
Universidad del Valle, Colombia
Abstract:
This article studies trust as an essential mechanism to simplify social interactions, drawing on Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory and Alfred Schütz’s phenomenology. Trust plays a crucial role in social interactions’ organization and inner workings, as it renders communication possible across time, by easing the uncertainty inherent to double contingency in social relations. Following an interpretive approach, we argue that trust is not a mechanism to remove complexity when it comes to building social reality but rather to ease it, by allowing us to act, even with incomplete information. Findings suggest that trust is both a principle organizing how human beings deal with the world and a key theoretical category to understand action under uncertain circumstances.
Keywords: Trust, social complexity, alter-ego, action.
