Trust functions as capital that commits its user to continued trustworthy conduct

Evidence

The communication of interest in the display of trust, the presentation of self as trustworthy, the engagement with and the reciprocation of trust are all efforts to intensify and generalize social relationships which prove, in long-term relationships at least, to be both opportune and constraining. Thus, an element of social control is built into relationships of trust. Trust accumulates as a kind of capital which opens up more opportunities for more extensive action but which must be continually used and tended and which commits the user to a trustworthy self-presentation, from which he can only escape with great difficulty. One can win trust by means of deceitful self-presentation, but one can only maintain it and use it as continually available capital if one continues the deception. Illusion then turns unnoticed into reality, the qualities which were at first deceitful grow into habits, the advantages of trust serve as an instrument of obligation. Trust educates. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 246

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines trust as a form of capital — ‘trust as capital’ — building on the chapter’s tactical-conception framing.
• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s Luhmann-Giddens-Ishiguro thesis: Stevens’s self-presentation as trustworthy head butler is precisely the ‘continually used and tended’ capital from which he cannot escape.