This is great – an entire book on trust, cooperation and social systems from the University of Oxford Dept. of Sociology has been made available for download: “Trust: Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations, edited by Diego Gambetta.”

“The editor and contributors have decided that the book should be available to download free of charge. One of the original reasons for the volume was to try and understand the difficulties of developing economies, and we therefore feel that the volume should be accessible to scholars and students of less privileged countries. Given that we incurred some cost in producing the digital version, and would like to fund further electronic publishing, we would be grateful if those readers who find the volume of value (and can afford it) would send us a contribution of $10.”

Random, sample chapter headings:

• The Biological Evolution of Cooperation and Trust: Patrick Bateson
• Trust and political agency: John Dunn
• Familiarity, Confidence, Trust: Problems and Alternatives: Niklas Luhmann

You get the picture.

» Trust: Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations, edited by Diego Gambetta. [thanks Dan!]