Book Review

摘要

The last 15 years have seen a number of attempts by social scientists with an interest in risk to explicate the concept of trust in relation to decisionmakers and decision making. This work has proceeded alongside efforts in other fields, notably management and political science, to come to some common, empirically grounded definition of what we mean by trust. The current edited by volume by Michael Siegrist, Timothy C. Earle, and Heinz Gutscher-the latest in Earthscan's Risk and Society Series (edited by Ragnar E. Lofstedt)-attempts to integrate concepts from across fields and extend recent work for those specifically interested in risk. The volume's authors include many of the most published risk researchers from the United Kingdom and Europe, including many whose works have appeared regularly in this journal. Only three of the book's 12 chapters are written by American authors, highlighting the strength of risk research in Europe. The chapters, nine of which are co-authored by two or more colleagues, represent edited versions of working papers initially presented as part of a Zurich Conference on Trust and Risk Management. Together, the collected works speak of the many different ways that social scientists continue to conceptualize and study trust at the social level.