The foregoing summary description of the different patterns of interpersonal relations that develop in various societies of sectors thereof – together with the more detailed analysis of different patterns of patron–client relations presented above – enables us to draw some (even if preliminary) conclusions, not only as we have done in the preceding chapters about the social conditions which generate different patterns of such interpersonal relations, but also about the central analytical focus of our discussion – namely about the ambivalence and dialectics of trust in the social order. These are above all manifest in the relations between the modes of construction of trust in the institutional order and the attempts at the construction of new areas of trust – and of participation in the realm of some pristine, common meaning – in the various types of interpersonal relations, seemingly beyond this order or in opposition to it.

We have seen that, whatever the differences between various types of such interpersonal relations, they all tend to construct realms of trust and of participation in a spiritual realm beyond the major institutionalised sectors of a society – specifically, but not exclusively, beyond that of kinship – in which trust and participation in the realm of meaning are seemingly most fully institutionalised.