Abstract
This article argues that trust emerges as a key interactional mechanism through which vendors, artists, and performers that work in a public marketplace turn daily conditions of uncertainty into enduring stability. Drawing on four years of ethnographic data, I empirically illustrate a process of building, maintaining, and protecting trust. Following trust from the level of one-on-one interaction through to the level of a community, I expose the particular interactional work trust does for different people across different situations. In the end, the way a social psychological mechanism plays out over time has significant social and material consequences for people working under highly uncertain conditions.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
