Abstract
The ConTrust research initiative challenges the conventional wisdom that trust is antithetical to conflict. Instead, ConTrust posits that under certain social and institutional conditions, trust can also emerge in and through conflict. To lay the groundwork for this agenda, this working paper develops a basic concept of trust that is the foundation for more specific conceptions of trust. Furthermore, it distinguishes between justified and unjustified trust, introduces a notion of social integration through conflict, highlights the role of uncertainty and crisis in contemporary trust dynamics, and outlines avenues for studying trust formation in contexts of political, socio-economic, epistemic, and security conflict. Through this work, ConTrust seeks to advance our understanding of how modern pluralistic societies (and international orders) generate trust in the relative absence of shared norms and values, and to provide guidance on how conflict can be organized and shaped in ways that are productive of trust.
Keywords
Conflict; Crisis; Social Cohesion; Justification; Trust; Uncertainty
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Authors
Prof. Dr. Nicole Deitelhoff is Executive Director at PRIF and head of PRIF’s Research Department International Institutions. She is a Professor of International Relations and Theories of Global Order at Goethe University. Nicole Deitelhoff is also co-speaker of the Frankfurt section of the Research Institute Social Cohesion (RISC) and the Research Center Normative Orders. Her research covers contestation and crises of international institutions and norms; world order politics, the foundations of political rule and its legitimation; forms of opposition and dissidence; as well as conflict and social cohesion in democracy.
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Prof. Dr. Rainer Forst (1964) is Professor of Political Theory and Philosophy at Goethe University and Co-Speaker of the Normative Orders Research Center, Speaker of the DFG Center for Advanced Studies “Justitia Amplificata” and of the Leibniz Research Group “Transnational Justice”. Main research interests: theories of justice, democracy and toleration, critical theory and moral reasoning. Publications include: Contexts of Justice (1994; University of California Press 2002), Toleration in Conflict (2003; Cambridge University Press 2013), The Right to Justification (2007; Columbia University Press 2012), Justification and Critique (2011; Polity 2013), Normativity and Power (2015; Oxford University Press 2017) and Die noumenale Republik (2021); all published by Suhrkamp Verlag and translated into many languages. In 2012, he received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation. He is a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and of the British Academy.
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Prof. Dr. Vinzenz Hediger, *1969, is professor of cinema studies at the Institut für Theater-, Film- und Medienwissenschaft at Goethe Universität Frankfurt, where he directs the Graduate Research Training Program “Konfigurationen des Films” (www.konfigurationen-des-films.de) and the area studies project CEDITRAA – Cultural Entrepreneurship and Digital Transformation in Africa and Asia (www.ceditraa.net). His research covers film theory, film and media history, documentary forms, and organizational media and supply studies. He earned his PhD from the University of Zurich in 1999 and served as the Krupp Foundation professor of documetanry forms at Ruhr-Universität Bochum from 2004-2011, before moving to Frankfurt. He is a member of the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature and of the Academia Europea. He is a co-founder of NECS – European Network for Cinema and Media Studies (www.necs.org), the founding editor of the Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft (www.zfmedienwissenschaft.de) and a past president of the Gesellschaft für Medienwissenschaft (www.gfmedienwissenschaft.de)
Prof. Dr. Tobias Wille is Assistant Professor (W1) of International Security at Goethe University Frankfurt and the academic coordinator of the research initiative “ConTrust: Trust in Conflict”. His research focuses on trust and distrust in international politics, on international security and on diplomacy. He studied political science, philosophy, and economics at the University of Munich, Yale University and the London School of Economics and Political Science. In 2017, he received his PhD from Goethe University Frankfurt. From 2018 to 2020, Tobias was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University in New York on a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship from the European Commission.
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