Trust operates in the zone between kinship and formal contract

Evidence

One, kinship, is an extrapolation from statuses typical of traditional ideology and practice; its antithesis is the legally sanctioned contract of the modern state and civil society. There remains the zone of free-floating social relationships formed by choice in the expectation of mutuality. The most neutral term for this zone is association, but its strongest form of expression is friendship, the negotiated order of free individuals joined by affection and shared experience rather than by legal sanction or the ties of blood. It is in this third area of social life that trust plays so prominent a role, relatively unmediated by the formal obligations of kinship and contract. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2310

Categorization

• XREF: Maps directly onto the reader’s Luhmann/Hardin theoretical frame — trust as filling the gap where neither descent-based familiarity nor enforceable contract provides observable constraints.
• DEFINE: Defines the ‘association/friendship’ zone where trust is relatively unmediated by kinship obligation or legal sanction.