Trust: Social and Cultural Capital

How do people come to trust or distrust one another? How does this relate to strategies for accumulating economic, social, and cultural capital? This class surveys cross-cultural examples of trust and accumulation in order to develop an intellectual tool kit for understanding and engaging issues of trust and community in periods of rapid social change. The themes will be broadly applicable to any sort of social activism. The core ideas will come from Bourdieu and Putnam, and these will be refined with case studies from non-Western societies. (Any 100-level SOAN course) 3 hrs. Sem.