Constitutive Practices and Garfinkel’s Notion of Trust: Revisited

Abstract

This article is intended to reinstate, in at least a prefatory way, some ethnomethodological (EM) considerations concerning trust. The idea of constitutive practices — as it was taken up in Garfinkel’s sociology — turned on trust as a background condition for mutually intelligible action. Starting with a consideration of Garfinkel’s 1963 study of trust, the article critically considers some formal analytic alternates to his approach. The aspects of trust that are ‘elusive’ to the formal-analytic approach are shown to result from its allusive treatment by formal analysis. In Garfinkel’s hands trust is not elusive. The critique of formal analytic studies builds on Garfinkel’s writings and certain strands of analytic and ordinary language philosophy. These sources ground the author’s suggestion that the study of trust be taken up again, albeit along respecified analytic lines. Examples are given, both of an EM and conversation-analytic (CA) kind.