System boundaries enable specifying where trust or distrust applies

Evidence

A further aspect which can contribute to the rationalization of trust and distrust in social systems has already been mentioned on numerous occasions in the preceding pages and must now be worked out in its particular problematic. This is the specifiability of the respects in which one trusts or distrusts. As soon as, and in so far as, the boundaries of a system are defined, it can allocate specific functions internally to subsystems and mechanisms and thus define more precisely actions, situations and roles with regard to which trust or distrust is expected. What would be absurd as a general rule of conduct, or could not be motivated, can be achieved within the boundaries of specific systems which themselves enjoy the trust of their members. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 319

Categorization

• XREF: This is the mechanism connecting Luhmann to Giddens: system boundaries create the faceless commitments Stevens makes — the household system defines roles that make trusting Darlington over one’s own conscience rational.