The Analysis of Particularized and Generalized Social Trust in Iran

Social trust as one of the crucial indices of social capital has a key role in the process of development. Trust is an important dimension of both civic culture and urban life in which ties strictly to the quality of life and mental health. Radius of trust brings about divisions in the concept to some main categories in the sociological literature. For us in this paper the concept of trust falls into 2 major groups: “Particularized trust” and “generalized trust”.

Generalized trust which stands at a higher level of particularized trust means the trust between intimate ones, relates to the wider and more abstract facts like social guilds that occupy positions beyond boundaries of family, neighborhood and ethnicity and should be defined in a national scale. Although the particularized trust is less risky it doesn’t lead to a success above a local community while the generalized trust arisen through democracies brings about the sustainable development. Furthermore, particularized trust reinforces the social segments for it hinders the constitution of “social we” which is the main basis of consensus, consistency and dynamic social order. As a matter of fact, a society with generalized trust has a more tolerance to deal with issues of collective actions which is mentioned in the game theory and rational choice of act.

In this paper, according to our definition of trust and its categories we’ve made a comparison between particularized and generalized trust in Iran through secondary analysis of the results of a national survey conducted in 2015 in Iran. Our findings indicate that the social trust in Iran doesn’t have a vast radius. On the other word, trust has strength in a limited sector in Iran and this fact can slow down the process of development in the country.