Theorizing "trust" in the economic field in the era of neoliberalism: the perspectives of entrepreneurs in Mardin

Date

2012

Author

Atalay Güneş, Zehra Nurdan

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This thesis aims to analyze how the global and local relations are articulated within the economic field through trust relations in Mardin. These relations will be explained from actor’s perspectives, with emphasis on the nature of the interaction, through are course to the social and institutional context in which these relations and the economic field are embedded. To this end, a qualitative study, has been conducted during the spring of 2010, using in-depth interviews with 24 entrepreneurs in grain production industry in the Mardin Organized Industrial District. The study analyzes trust relations by way of contextualizing them within the economic relations of entrepreneurs in Mardin. It describes how these entrepreneurs interact with existing institutional regulations and other actors in the field through trust relations at the local, national, and global markets. Trusts stemming from informal resources, such as from having a good family name or in being honest, provide sufficient grounds for doing business, where formal institutional regulations do not work. As such, entrepreneurs try to avoid doing business when they do not trust the formal institutional mechanisms and, at the same time, when they lack informal relations based on trust. Trust in this context demarcates with whom entrepreneurs do business and to which market they send their products. Streaming from shared experiences in the economic field, which in turn are shaped by informal relations, formal national institutional regulations, and neoliberal organization at the global context, mutual trust becomes a key factor in every facet of these interactions.

Subject Keywords

Entrepreneurship, Business enterprises, Grain trade, Neoliberalism

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12614437/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/21597

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis