Conceptualizing Trust and Distrust as Alternative Stable States: Lessons from the Flint Water Crisis

Despite the universally recognized importance of fostering trust and avoiding distrust in governance relationships, there remains considerable debate on core questions like the relation between (dis)trust and the evaluations of the characteristics that make a governance agent appear (un)worthy of tr...

Full description

Saved in:

Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Ecology and society Vol. 28; no. 3; p. 14
Main Authors:	Hamm, J A, Carrera, J S, Van Fossen, J A, Key, K D, Woolford, S J, Bailey, S B, McKay, A S, Evans, L B, Calhoun, K D
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	Canada Resilience Alliance 01-09-2023
Subjects:	Community Crises distrust Empowerment Governance Qualitative analysis Questions resilience theory Trust Trustworthiness Water crises trust resilience theory distrust governance
Online Access:	Get full text
Tags:	Add Tag No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!

Description
Summary:	Despite the universally recognized importance of fostering trust and avoiding distrust in governance relationships, there remains considerable debate on core questions like the relation between (dis)trust and the evaluations of the characteristics that make a governance agent appear (un)worthy of trust. In particular, it remains unclear whether levels of (dis)trust simply follow levels of (dis)trustworthiness-such that building trust is primarily a question of increasing evidence of trustworthiness and avoiding evidence of distrustworthiness, or if their dynamics are more complicated. The current paper adds novel theory for thinking about the management of trust and distrust in the governance context through the application of principles borrowed from resilience theory. Specifically, we argue that trust and distrust exist as distinct, self-reinforcing (i.e., stable) states separated by a threshold. We then theorize as to the nature of the self-reinforcing processes and use qualitative data collected from and inductively coded in collaboration with Flint residents as part of a participatory process to look for evidence of our argument in a well-documented governance failure. We conclude by explaining how this novel perspective allows for clearer insight into the experience of this and other communities and speculate as to how it may help to better position governance actors to respond to future crises.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23
ISSN:	1708-3087 1708-3087
DOI:	10.5751/ES-14410-280314