Authority and trust in US culture and society : interdisciplinary approaches and perspectives / Günter Leypoldt, Manfred Berg (eds.)

Includes bibliographical references

Authority and Trust in the United States p. 9 / Günter Leypoldt -- The Decline of Political Trust and the Rise of Populism in the United States p. 37 / Manfred Berg -- Waning Trust in (Scientific) Experts and Expertise? -- Recent Evidence from the United States and Elsewhere p. 61 / Martin Thunert -- Shifting Meridians of Global Authority -- Who Is Pushing in Which Direction, and Why? p. 87 / Florian Böller and Sebastian Harnisch -- Trust and the City -- Analyzing Trust from a Socio-Spatial Perspective p. 111 / Ulrike Gerhard and Judith Keller and Cosima Werner -- "We must trust that look of hers" -- William Dean Howells's Urban Theory of Trust and Trustworthiness in A Hazard of Mew Fortunes (1890) p. 135 / Margit Peterfy -- "We believe that we have a right to revelations, visions, and dreams from God" -- Joseph Smith, Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transformation of Religious Authority in the Antebellum Period p. 167 / Jan Stievermann and Claudia Jetter -- The Trust Debate in the Literature of the American Renaissance p. 191 / Dietmar Schloss -- Authority, Genealogy, Infrastructure -- Nineteenth-Century Discourses of Transatlantic Relationality p. 223 / Tim Sommer -- Shoppers, Worshippers, Culture Warriors -- Reading and the Hermeneutics of Trust p. 245 / Gunter Leypoldt

In the past two decades, a discourse of crisis has emerged about the democratic institutions and political culture of the US: many structures of authority which people had more or less taken for granted are facing a massive public loss of trust. This volume takes an interdisciplinary and historical look at the transformations of authority and trust in the United States. The contributors examine government institutions, political parties, urban neighborhoods, scientific experts, international leadership, religious communities, and literary production. Exploring the nexus between authority and trust is crucial to understand the loss of legitimacy experienced by political, social, and cultural institutions not only in the United States but in Western democracies at large