Modern society abstracts persons just as pre-industrial cultures personified objects

Evidence

Social relations have generally evolved from a concrete, interpersonal basis to the abstract mass anonymities of political economy, an evolution obscured by a modern usage which tends to objectify persons as abstractions, much as pre-industrial cultures personify objects. Social theorists perennially ask how qualities of trust, fairness, and cooperation which belong naturally to intimate social worlds might be projected on to the modern stage of markets and states. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2423

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels Maine’s status-to-contract evolution named in the same passage; also resonates with the reader’s Saramago/Luhmann/Hardin project — the blindness epidemic collapses modern abstract trust back into concrete interpersonal monitoring, reversing this historical evolution. — connects to: Modern production society converts all lived experience into representations