Beyond Rule; Trust and Power as Capacities

Taking an approach that avoids comprehending power and trust as entities to be studied apart, the article insists on elucidating trust and power as they are enacted in their intimate and delicate relationship to each other and to other human and social phenomena of similar importance, such as knowledge and experience, gift-giving, hope, freedom and agency. To permit us to understand power and trust as interdependent dimensions, the article confronts the notions of power as command, coercion, control and calculation and develops a conception of power as a capacity. This permits us to consider trusting as an exercise of power and an anticipatory affect. Trust is a resolve to bear an experienced risk by confiding in the new and unknown.