Trust and meaning in intervention-research

Elements framing the assessment of mistrust

Abstract

We are continuing our reflections from a historical-cultural perspective on the nature of trust and its central role in Intervention-Research, as developed by the EFTS unit of the University of Toulouse. Describing the wage labor in France, as it has historically developed to become the benchmark of employment, we introduce the concepts of vulnerability and mistrust, the latter being particularly inevitable in the assessment of trust. We propose that rather than seeking its annihilation in a project seeking the building of inter-individual trust, it is more relevant to channel mistrust to promote the deployment of a major objective of Intervention-Research, emancipation.