Contextualised vulnerability: recalibrating agency and context in trust research

Although the trust literature provides valuable insights into how vulnerability is experienced and managed, it does so largely through a dyadic relational view. In this view, the trustee’s characteristics and actions are positioned as the primary source of risk, and vulnerability is conceptualised as a relatively static, situational condition. While useful, this paper argues that the dyadic view offers a narrow account of how vulnerability is experienced, overlooking notably the trustors’ broader relational embeddedness. Drawing on Sloterdijk’s Spherology (1998, 1999, 2004), the paper advances a shift to a spherical relational view, emphasising that trustors inhabit multiple overlapping ‘life worlds’ (e.g. work, family, friendships). In this view, a trustor’s vulnerability is shaped not only by the given interaction, but also by prior and ongoing experiences across interconnected relational spheres. Trustors ‘gather’ risk experiences across spheres and merge these into the context with the trustee, forming a spatially grounded (i.e. embodied) and multiplex vulnerability disposition. The paper introduces the concept of contextualised vulnerability to capture this dynamic, situated experience. Doing so, it redefines vulnerability not as a passive condition but as an actively cultivated capacity for trust, offering an embodied understanding of trustor agency and building trust in complex and uncertain environments.