On the Use of Multiplexity To Assess the Meaning of Trust Relations

• In Event: Mathematical Sociology Section Flash Talks
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 6. On the Use of Multiplexity To Assess the Meaning of Trust Relations

Abstract

The sociological literature contains many competing and conflicting definitions of "trust". Despite this conceptual disarray, there is an abundance of evidence that trust, whatever it may be, is a phenomenon that is profoundly important for social and economic processes. I propose moving beyond these theoretical impasses by exploiting the multiplex and multi-level nature of our network data. Specifically, I propose that the meaning of trust in any social context is what trusting implies about other relations in that context, and that we can usefully explain inter-context variation in this meaning by looking at context-level variables. I apply this insight to multi-level and multiplex network data collected from 75 rural Indian villages, assessing the meaning of the reported trust relation by examining its correlation with other relations. I follow earlier work that uses log-linear models to examine the correlation between trust ties and other kinds of ties, and investigate the degree to which between-village variance in the within-village correlations between trust and other relations can be explained by between-village variation in economic organization.

Author

• Maurice Bokanga, University of Chicago