The first context of trust is the kinship system, which in most pre-modern settings provides a relatively stable mode of organising “bundles” of social relations across time and space. Kinship connections are often a focus of tension and conflict. But however many conflicts they involve and anxieties they provoke, they are very generally bonds which can be relied upon in the structuring of actions in fields of time-space. This is true on the level of both fairly impersonal and more personal connections. In other words, kinspeople can usually be relied upon to meet a range of obligations more or less regardless of whether they feel personally sympathetic towards the specific individuals involved. Moreover, kinship often does provide a stabilising network of amicable or intimate relations which endure across time-space. Kinship, in sum, provides a nexus of reliable social connections which, in principle and very commonly in practice, form an organising medium of trust relations.

Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Moderni…, loc. 246