Short Abstract

The global crisis of trust in public institutions has been primarily studied focusing on trust, its loss and how to regain it. Paradoxically, mistrust as a social force in its own right remains understudied in an international scenario in which its role is becoming increasingly important.

Long Abstract

Mistrust has emerged as a key epistemic and affective force in contemporary social life. While anthropologists have long recognised trust as the basis of sociality, the increasing uncertainty, contestation and conflict of recent decades has highlighted the importance of mistrust as a means of interaction and a form of critique. Mistrust is not merely the absence of trust; it can also generate new forms of solidarity, modes of knowledge production and political imaginaries (Mühlfried, 2018). While distrust often refers to a conscious rejection of trustworthiness, mistrust can be more diffuse, habitual and generative. Rather than destroying sociality, it produces alternative forms of relating (Pasquini 2023). Mistrust has emerged as a trope for professionals working conditions and emergency response decision-making during the COVID-19 pandemic (Solomon 2022). While mistrust can be a structuring principle of social life (Carrey, 2017), it can also deepen social fractures, fuel conflict and undermine hierarchies, systems and orders.

We invite contributions that ethnographically engage with mistrust as a key dynamic of conflict and social friction that may also produce new forms of sociality. Papers might examine mistrust of state institutions in contexts of corruption or repression; scepticism towards medical or scientific expertise in the face of, for instance, contested illness; suspicion of religious or community leaders amid shifting moral landscapes; or the role of mistrust in grassroots mobilisation and digital publics. By foregrounding mistrust, this panel seeks to interrogate its ambivalent potential as both a destabilising force and a creative opening in the reconfiguration of authority.

This Panel has 3 pending paper proposals.
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