Trust language marks anxiety in long-term market relations that price alone cannot govern

Evidence

Cost considerations, then, dictated the initial switch from in-house production to reliance on the market. Further discussion showed, however, that these evolving market relations were a far cry from those of the standard textbook, where ‘faceless buyers and sellers meet for an instant to exchange standardized goods.’ By 1984-85 the firms had begun to use a suggestive word to describe their relationship to these new subcontractors: partnership (partenariat). In the course of conversations in which I myself participated, other equally emotive terms evoked the nature of interfirm relations: the importance of loyalty (fidélité); the existence of a moral contract (contrat moral); and the need for mutual trust (confiance mutuelle). This language suggests a certain anxiety inherent in subcontracting, and the need for something like trust if the relationship was to work smoothly. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2494

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the reader’s core thesis: trusting behavior emerges where market relations require mutual dependency beyond faceless spot exchange, echoing Luhmann’s notion that familiarity underwrites trust.
• DEFINE: Introduces partenariat, fidélité, contrat moral, and confiance mutuelle as the vocabulary firms use for non-market trust in subcontracting.