Covid-19 and Trust
Major destabilizing events frequently bring issues of trust sharply into focus. The current pandemic has proved no exception, stressing trust’s place (or lack thereof) in response to health guidelines, institutions, information, and even each other. The pandemic has seen, arguably, two ends of the extreme of trust, witnessing the hoarding of essentials in its early stages as well as networks of community solidarity. What has the place of trust been during the pandemic? How might it have changed over its course? How have existing entrenched racial, gender, economic, and geo-political inequalities impacted trust, or even been considered in responses to the pandemic? Is trust even a helpful concept to think with and use – to trust ‘trust’, as it were – during a pandemic? All of this and more…
On 10th June 2021, the Pandemic Perspectives group debated the subject of ‘Trust and Covid-19’, using Paul Faulkner’s study of Dominic Cumming’s breach of lockdown in 2020 (with a reply by Philip Pettit), Cynthia Enloe’s ‘Femininity and the Paradox of Trust Building in Patriarchies during COVID-19’ as points of discussion, and Alexey Tikhomirov’s interview with leading historians of trust, Geoffrey Hosking, Fancesca Trivellato and Ian Forrest for a broad introduction to scholarly approaches to trust.
Given the vast range of the topic, and equally wide array of potential ways in which to tackle it, Alastair Gardner opened the debate with a brief overview of some of the competing theoretical approaches to trust and potential topics and general musings. Firstly, he noted that there is no clear consensus on what trust is, treated as a form of social capital, social lubricant, emotive stance, epistemological issue and so on. He suggested the adoption for the session of a rough working definition drawn from Katharine Hawley’s How to be Trustworthy (2019) that trust is reliance plus something extra. He raised the matter of different kinds of trust, arguing that although related, trust at an interpersonal level often varies greatly from that at a societal or institutional level. Drawing upon Faulkner’s piece, he mentioned the UK government’s trust in the public’s compliance with imposed measures, and the subsequent perceived decline in trust following Cumming’s trip to Barnard Castle as an indication of the brittleness of trust (referencing Matthew Carey’s critique of trust in Mistrust: An Ethnographic Theory). This raised the problem of the role of trust in fostering compliance with government guidelines. Changing tracks again, Alastair brought up some of the epistemological aspects of trust, introducing Forrest’s study of the medieval Catholic church, and the asymmetry in knowledge often involved in trusting institutions, those being asked to trust them often at a disadvantage and raising questions of transparency in the UK government’s initial response. Moving onto a different subject, Alastair also highlighted the of the often-discriminatory power of trust, the process of deciding who to trust often being a contributing factor to existing hierarchies.
Liam Knight replied first, positing the relationship between appeals to trust and the phenomenon of post-truth, itself often based upon emotional reactions and commitments as compared to more ‘rational’ evaluations. Liam went on to point out that some studies had shown that while trust in government leaders was initially low, it had in fact risen over the course of the pandemic, as had trust in scientific bodies and figures, asking whether the pandemic had reversed the supposed decline in experts prior to the pandemic?
Drawing on his own research into the borrowing practices of the French monarchy prior to the French revolution, Ronan Love took up the subject of intermediaries and trust during the pandemic. Specifically, he pointed to the government’s use of positive feeling towards the NHS compared to the test and trace system, which although ostensibly part of the NHS, was considerably privatised. He then observed the similarities between issues of trust/compliance and credit/debt relationships, especially the role of building trust over time, which, due to the unprecedented nature of the pandemic, the government did not have time to do. This, in addition to the UK government’s recent history of withdrawing assistance, did not engender people to trust it automatically.
Alastair agreed with Ronan on the role of intermediaries, remarking on the prominence of celebrities in government information campaigns, borrowing credibility from these figures. In response to Ronan’s points on trust vs. compliance, Alastair argued that the measures taken to support lockdown measures had helped expose the role of violence in the authority of the state, raising the problem of trust and trust in violence as the recourse of the state.
Carmen Torres interjected with a perspective on trust in the context of the United States, arguing that political trust was an elusive political commodity prior to the pandemic, with the government already perceived as untrustworthy. On the subject of trust in the police, particularly among members of BAME communities, there existed little to no trust in the institution. On ways to promote trust in governance, Carmen referenced the ‘4Cs’: compassion, consistency, communication, and competence – each seemingly lacking in the US government’s response to Covid-19
Addressing the shifts in working patterns Covid-19 has precipitated, Marta Surname argued that online working from home promoted a lack of trust, with various modes of surveillance employed, with timestamps, information control etc, promoted a climate of distrust, and a sense constant supervision rather than autonomy.
Responding to Carmen, David Christie broached the cultural specificities of trust in differing mythologies, pointing to the American Dream and independence, as well as British probity and respect for institutions such as the monarchy. To this, Alastair added the related problem of notions of a ‘golden age’ of trust, either in the recent or distant past. On the dissonance of rhetoric and reality, Carmen reflected on the promises of governor of New York state, Andrew Cuomo.
Ronan, Liam, and David then debated the relative perception vs. reality of compliance with various measures, principally vaccination uptake, but extending to mask-wearing and social distancing, with Liam referencing that for all of the publicity surrounding vaccine hesitancy, vaccine uptake had been high.
From here, Ronan remarked that there is an apparent distrust of others, with an expectation that others would not comply with measures, even while the same people said they would comply. This, he suggested, derived from public messaging and a dipropionate coverage on those who would ‘exploit’ others’ compliance, feeding into a narrative of personal responsibility as opposed to institutional accountability.
There followed a brief discussion on comparing national responses, principally the case of Sweden and its drive for herd immunity. To this comparative strand, Carmen added the lack of trust in the US government to provide basic necessities, to which Alastair thought might have less to with ‘trust’, than differing ‘social contracts’ between state and citizen in these contexts (with Ronan questioning which social contract this might be).
From here, Liam returned the group the idea of living through a ‘crisis of trust’, this one, in distinction to those in the past, augmented by a ‘post-truth mentality’. The group seemed to agree that new information technologies did mark something new, if not a ‘crisis of trust’, then certainly new conditions, the spectre of trust not in persons, but institutions and non-human agents appearing not too far-off in the future.