The Metropolis and its Social Life: Trust Relations in the City
The fast digitalization affects our everyday urban practices, and these influence our relations in public space. What happens when we take social theories of trust to the street of today? This talk presents the first chapter of a book on the thrown-togetherness of public space and how its changing character may request us to re-think the meanings of trust – and indeed whether we may also revisit the idea that the metropolis brings about the blasé mental life.
School of Social and Political Sciences; College of Social Sciences Hub
Date: Wednesday 07 May 2025
Time: 13:00 - 14:00
Venue: University of Glasgow, 42 Bute Gardens, Room 916
Category: Public lectures, Academic events, Student events, Staff workshops and seminars
Speaker: Dr Talja Blokland, Humboldt University of Berlin
The fast digitalization affects our everyday urban practices, and these influence our relations in public space. What happens when we take social theories of trust to the street of today? Can we think of urban public space as relational settings of trust, distrust and mistrust, the trilogy of Sztompka (1999), and what could we say about how urban fragmentation and seclusion affects the processes that may – or may not – bring trust and distrust about? And what is the role of digitalization in urban fragmentation? This talk presents the first chapter of a book on the thrown-togetherness of public space and how its changing character may request us to re-think the meanings of trust – and indeed whether we may also revisit the idea that the metropolis brings about the blasé mental life.