Agency relationships drive social differentiation and bridge exchange distances

Evidence

Agency relationships are found even in relatively simple types of social organization, from the division of responsibility in the nuclear family to the informal reciprocities among children at play. But they especially accommodate more complex forms of organization. Agency fuels social differentiation. Agents bridge the social and physical distances that otherwise limit social exchange. Agents incite and facilitate collective forms of action. — Shapiro, Susan P., The Social Control of Impersonal Trust, 18

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes Durkheim’s division of labor and the general sociological claim that intermediaries/clergy/lawyers arise from growing social scale — connects to the reader’s ongoing work on institutional intermediaries. — connects to: Geographic distance from information sources drives reliance on agents — Shapiro, Susan P., The Social Control of Impersonal Trust, 23; Trusting agency relationships enables complex social organization.; Trust emerges from gradually escalated reciprocal exchanges in ongoing relationships — Shapiro, Susan P., The Social Control of Impersonal Trust, 15 (+4 more)

Related

• Agency relationships multiply because scale creates access barriers to information and property. (similarity 0.83)
• Trusting agency relationships enables complex social organization. (similarity 0.83)
• The very conditions that create agency also preclude personalizing trust relationships. (similarity 0.82)
• Collective agency shifts trust from persons to future-dated impersonal systems (similarity 0.80)
• Modern social organization produces distance through mediated action and intermediaries (similarity 0.79)
• Impersonal trust emerges where face-to-face control mechanisms are unavailable (similarity 0.78)
• Geographic distance from information sources drives reliance on agents (similarity 0.78)
• Impersonal trust persists despite agency tensions and varies greatly across conditions. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Trusting agency relationships enables complex social organization. #expands (0.85)
• Trust emerges from gradually escalated reciprocal exchanges in ongoing relationships #expands (0.80) — Shapiro, Susan P., The Social Control of Impersonal Trust, 15
• The cash economy correlates social expansion with individual differentiation #exemplifies (0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 663
• Close communities substitute communal sanctioning norms for dyadic trust relationships #qualifies (0.72)