Trust Group Meetings
This discussion group grows out of the conviction that trust is a critically neglected area in International Relations theorising. Instead of focusing on the possibilities of trust, scholars have either been excessively preoccupied with the politics of mistrust or have reduced trust to game theory and rational choice approaches, arguably striping away the centrality of the emotional bases of trust. Though literature on trust appears in other disciplines, notably sociology, philosophy, psychology, and history, none of it has been systematically applied to the international level.
For further details, please contact the convenors: Jan Ruzicka jlr@aber.ac.uk or Vincent Keating vck06@aber.ac.uk.
Upcoming Meetings
All regular meetings are on Monday from 11:00 to 12:00 in the Meetings Room (1.09), International Politics Building.
2011
Previous Meetings
2010
November 29th
Susan Shapiro (1987) "The Social Control of Impersonal Trust", The American Journal of Sociology, 93(3) 623-658November 8th
Aaron M. Hoffman (2002) "A Conceptualization of Trust in International Relations", European Journal of International Relations, 8(3) 375-401
October 29th
Special talk by Paul Ingram, Director of BASIC.
October 18th
Charles A Kupchan (2010) "Enemies into Friends: How the United States can court its adversaries", Foreign Affairs, 120(2) 120-135.
July 1st
Reflections on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty 2010 Review Conference.
Introduction by Jan Ruzicka
March 8th
Rathbun, Brian C. (2009), "It Takes all Types: social psychology, trust, and the international relations paradigm in our minds" International Theory 1(3) 345-380.
February 22nd
Ruzicka, Jan and Nicholas J. Wheeler (2010),"The Puzzle of Trusting Relationships in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty", International Affairs, 86(1): 69-85
Discussant: Jan Ruzicka
January 25th
Presentation by Vincent Keating: "Trust and Confidence in the Security Dilemma."
2009
December 7th
Camron, Lynne (2009) "Empathy - A Review", Working Paper for the Global Uncertainties Project.
Discussant: Dr. Naomi Head
November 5th
Special talk by Marek Kohn, Fellow of the Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics at the University of Brighton, entitled "Trust & Distrust in Yesterday's & Tomorrow's Europe". Audio recording of the lecture.
October 19th
"'I had gone to Lahore with a message of goodwill but in return we got Kargil': the promise and perils of 'leaps of trust' in India-Pakistan nuclear relations."
Special Presentation by Professor Nicholas Wheeler on his most recent work on trust-building in nuclear rivalries.
May 13th
Special talk by Professor Geoffrey Hosking, Emeritus Professor of Russian History at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, who will be discussing his paper entitled "The Credit Crunch - a Crisis of Trust". Audio of the event available. For recent work by Professor Hosking on this issue, please see his article "The 'Credit Crunch' and the Importance of Trust" in History & Policy.
April 1st
Special talk by Dr. Thierry Balzacq, Professor of Political Science at Namur University and the Centre D'Étude des Crises et des Conflits Internationaux who will discuss his paper entitled "Trust: From Securitization to Desecuritizing, and Back," part of his forthcoming book on security theory.
Thierry Balzacq is a co-signatory of the Critical Security Studies in Europe manifesto and his recent works include "The Policy Tools of Securitization: Information Exchange, EU Foreign and Interior Policies" (Journal of Common Market Studies) and "The Three Faces of Securitization: Political Agency, Audience and Context" (European Journal of International Relations).
Mar 16th
Tilly, Charles (2005) Trust and Rule, Cambridge: CUP. Chapter 1
Discussant: Jan Ruzicka, PhD Candidate, Department of International Politics
Feb 23rd
Boyd-Judson, Lyn (2002) "Strategic Moral Diplomacy: Mandela, Qaddafi, and the Lockerbie Negotiation," Foreign Policy Analysis, Vol. 1, No. 1, 73-97: available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1743-8594.2005.00004.x/abstract.
Discussant: Chris Curran, PhD Candidate, Department of International Politics
Feb 2nd
Elias, Norbert (2000) The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations, Oxford: Blackwell.
Discussant: Woodrow Wilson Professor Andrew Linklater, Department of International Politics. Professor Linklater has suggested that in preparation for the seminar the following sections be quickly reviewed: Preface, Chapters 10 and 11 from Part Two; Chapters 3 and 7 from Part Three , and Chapters 1-3 from Part Four.
2008
Dec 1st
Hollis, Martin, Trust within Reason, Chapter 5 - a copy of this reading can be picked up from Vincent Keating in 0.18 of the International Politics Building.
Nov 10th
O'Neill, Onora "A Question of Trust." The 2002 BBC Reith Lectures. The full text can be found here. We will be focusing on chapters 2 and 4, 'Trust and Terror' and 'Trust and Transparency'. Please note that there exists a conversation on Radio 4 between the authors from the last session and the upcoming session, Marek Kohn and Onora O'Neill. If you are interested in listening to this dialogue, please click here.
Oct 20th - Trust and Self-Interest
Kohn, Marek (2008), Self-Interest and the Common Good, (Oxford: Oxford University Press) 1st Chapter http://fds.oup.com/www.oup.co.uk/pdf/0-19-921791-2.pdf
Oct 6th - Trust as a Social Reality
Lewis, J. David and Weigert, Andrew (1985), "Trust as Social Reality", Social Forces, 63(4), 967-85.
June 19th
Symposium - "From Fear to Nuclear Learning: Historical and Psychological Perspectives on Trust and Distrust in the Cuban Missile Crisis"
April 14th - Trust and Hospitality
Presentation by Ali Bilgic, PhD candidate, Department of International Politics
March 3rd - Trust and Conflict Resolution
Herbert C. Kelman, “Building Trust among Enemies: The Central Challenge for International Conflict Resolution,”International Journal of Intercultural Relations Vol. 29, 2005, p. 639-650. Available on the Weatherhead Center website: http://www.wcfia.harvard.edu/faculty/hckelman/papers/hck_buildingtrust_IJIR.pdf
February 12th - Trust and Reason
Martin Hollis, Trust within Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) chapter 1. Copies of the chapter will be made available.
January 21st - Trust and Hegemony
Andrew Kydd, “In America (We) Used to Trust: U.S. Hegemony and Global Cooperation,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 120, No. 4, (Winter 2005/2006) p. 619-636.
2007
December 3 - Trust in Philosophy
Annette Baier, “Trust and Antitrust,” Ethics, Vol. 96, No. 2, 1986, pp. 231-260. (available on JSTOR)
November 19 - Trust in Sociology
Guido Möllering, “Leaps and Lapses of Faith: Exploring the Relationship Between Trust and Deception,” forthcoming in Brooke Harrington (ed.) Deception: From Ancient Empires to Internet Dating (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009).
Available on the Max Planck Institute website: http://www.mpifg.de/people/gm/downloads/Mollering_Trust-Deception_070613.pdf
November 5 - Trust in Political Theory
Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2004) chapter 1, pp. 1-27.
Available on the Russell Sage Foundation website: http://www.russellsage.org/publications/books/0-87154-341-9/chapter1_pdf
October 15 - Trust in International Relations
Deborah Welch Larson, “Trust and Missed Opportunities In International Relations,” Political Psychology, Vol. 18, No. 3, 1997, pp. 701-734