Trust, Faith and Calculativeness: A Theoretical Extension of O. Williamson's ‘Institutional Trust’

Peter Seele

A chapter in The Economics of Religion: Anthropological Approaches, 2011, pp 3-21 from Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Abstract: This chapter aims to develop an institutionalist concept of faith based on Williamson's concept of ‘institutional trust’ and Coleman's contribution to ‘placement of trust’. As a starting point, it considers the social capital literature on trust from the perspective of institutional economics and economic anthropology. ‘Institutional faith’ posits as a normative state the inevitability of trust with regard to certain questions human beings cannot answer. This has a behaviour-channelling effect which makes, e.g. for institutional stability. The proposed concept is evaluated critically by contrasting it with T. Kuran's concept of ‘preference falsification’ in the Hindu caste system. Finally, the concept is challenged by today's Hindu fundamentalism and makes a differentiation between fundamentalism and institutional faith.

Date: 2011
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:reanzz:s0190-1281(2011)0000031004

DOI: 10.1108/S0190-1281(2011)0000031004

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