Overlapping relationships in close communities generate both knowledge and incentives for trust.

Evidence

In a small, close community, each of us can have ongoing relationships with every other one of us. Such overlapping relationships typically generate a lot of knowledge relevant to trusting any particular person, and they generate incentives not only between two partners in trust but also between each of them and others in the thick community. … Among these people we therefore know whom we can trust for what (Williams 1988). We may say that trust in these contexts of a close community or subcommunity builds on thick relationships. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 140

Categorization

• XREF: Directly connects to the reader’s integration goal: thick relationships supply the observability and mutual monitoring that Luhmann’s familiarity presupposes and that blindness destroys in Saramago. — connects to: Dense civic networks enable trust, reciprocity and collective action. — Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: America’s Declining…, 17; Trusting communities enjoy economic and health advantages through lower transaction costs — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 442