I remember staying at a Hampton Inn, a no-frills hotel, in suburban Pittsburgh in 2002. What was remarkable about the simple, roomy hotel was that there was a small provision shop and a laundry in the basement without any cashier or CCTV. It was a self-service setup: You bought something, checked the price, and put the money in the cash box. For the laundry machine, you did the same. My son and I were staying at that hotel. We bought some snacks and detergent, washed our clothes ourselves, and paid for everything in cash duly.
I was impressed by the degree of trust and honesty the hotel management placed in their guests, and the guests reciprocated accordingly. I learned a simple fact: Trust begets trust.
Two decades later, on a subway in Berlin and later in Cologne, I did not see any checkers. My son assured me that he had gotten tickets for both of us through the relevant apps on his phone. Checkers do board the train occasionally and defaulters get duly fined.
During my two-month stay, I rarely encountered checkers on the trains in and around Frankfurt, Cologne, and Bonn. In Sydney last year, I saw a tall policeman standing near the gate at Glenfield station, checking and catching some wayward passengers without tickets who wanted to cheat the system but failed.
In China in 2017, I was impressed by the security at the subway stations in Shanghai and Beijing. Every station I used had airport-standard security, outfitted with scanners and all. Shanghai central railway station had the look and feel of an airport.
Why are there so few checkers in Germany, and yet why is the German railway not out of business? Trust saves money as it reduces transaction costs. Some societies are more trusting than others.
A trusting society is one where people trust each other out of free choice and without coercion. Surveys give us some indication of the level of trust, which varies from society to society.
In Bangladesh, 12.9% of people say they trust each other. The number for Egypt is 7.3%; and for Indonesia, it is 4.6%. Let’s turn to the rich countries of Asia: For Japan, it is 33.7%; and for Singapore, 34.4%. The same survey reports the level of trust in Germany is 41.6%, in Sweden 62.8%, in Norway 72.1%, and in Denmark, 73.9%.
While living in Singapore, we had a part-time helper who came from Johor Bahru, Malaysia, just across the border. Since we both worked and travelled quite frequently, we left a key with our domestic help. Her job was cleaning the apartment and feeding our cat, which she did with amazing care and regularity.
We have the same arrangement with a Filipina part-time domestic helper in Abu Dhabi. She has the key to our place and would come early in the morning to work without waking us up, and in our absence, she would feed the cat.
I think societies with high trust are societies with a robust civil society. By civil society, I mean a society where there is a lot of civility and politeness -- a breeding ground for trust. In turn, trust also helps make society more civil. Sometimes, it does not have to be the entire society; it can be a subset, that is, a part of the society.
The concept of "civil society" in German can be traced back to the term "bürgerliche Gesellschaft," which translates to "bourgeois society" or "civil society." Philosophers differentiated between the state, civil society, and family. Hegel, for example, viewed civil society as a sphere where individuals pursue their interests, engage in economic activities, and interact socially, distinct from both the private sphere of family and the political sphere of the state.
A modern German philosopher, Jürgen Habermas, made significant contributions to the concept of civil society. In his seminal work The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Habermas explores the development of the bourgeois public sphere in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He describes the public sphere as a domain of social life where public opinion can be formed through open, rational discourse among private individuals. This sphere mediates between society and the state, enabling citizens to engage in debate and influence political decision-making.
Habermas argues that in a functioning democracy, civil society should foster a vibrant public sphere where free and equal discourse takes place.
I think, in addition to the subtle but important political role civil society plays, it also helps nurture a culture of civility. In Cologne, my son took me to a jazz bar, which had the feel of a smokey joint without smoke, and without a live band. The bar owner played long-playing jazz albums to the delight of packed patrons, who comprised young and old, male, and female.
The place was filled with smiles, polite exchanges, and courtesies. Smokers took turns going out for their smokes and came back to their seats. If the seats were lost to some newcomers, they smiled and remained standing.
I recall similar civility and polite conversation at Sharif Mia's or Pedro’s canteen during my student days at Dhaka University in the 1970s. While Modhu’s canteen was the political society, the two canteens mentioned above that we frequented were parts of civil society, which were also frequented by Selim Al-Din, Nirmalendu Gun, and other budding poets such as Rudra Muhammad Shahidullah.
Habibul Haque Khondker is a sociology professor at Zayed University, Abu Dhabi who previously taught at the National University of Singapore.
