Shifts from personal to impersonal relations track society’s size and complexity

Evidence

Our modern English usage, inured as it is to the abstractions of mass society, makes no systematic discrimination between persons and things. But, if we rely on the language and ideology of our times alone, we will fail to understand a social evolution which crucially entails a shift in emphasis from personal to impersonal relations as a function of society’s greater size and complexity. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2455

Categorization

• XREF: Directly connects to the reader’s Hardin/Luhmann synthesis: impersonal trust replaces personal familiarity as societies grow; complements ‘The Social Control of Impersonal Trust’.
• DEEPTHINKING: Load-bearing for the reader’s entire project: the personal-to-impersonal shift is precisely the trust/observability transition that Saramago’s blindness collapses in reverse.