Achieving practical trust in the context of interpersonal vulnerability: An EMCA perspective

This paper examines how vulnerability as a social phenomenon is displayed, negotiated and managed in social interaction, and offers new insights into the micro-foundations of trust. Drawing on ethnomethodological conversation analysis (EMCA), we analyse naturally occurring encounters between social work professionals and individuals in vulnerable positions. Our analyses show how relational situated vulnerability is both displayed and topicalised, and how trust emerges in encounters not as a stable belief or disposition, but as a situated, relational accomplishment. We show how a range of interactional resources are used to manage vulnerability, jointly shape the moral and relational dynamics of the encounter, and calibrate the interlocutors’ trustworthiness. Our study contributes to trust and vulnerability research by (a) introducing the concept of observable vulnerability; (b) showing how individuals display, topicalise and minimise vulnerability in interaction; and c) demonstrating how interpersonal vulnerability dynamics are constructed through the interactants’ ‘trust work’ in asymmetrical institutional settings, and how this affects local trust production. We argue that this interactional perspective can enrich traditional trust research by informing the design of surveys, experiments and mixed-methods studies, and that it offers a bridge between micro-level interactional detail and macro-level theorising about trust in institutional and everyday life.