The article asserts that Goffman's concept of normality comes close to the notion of trust as a protective mechanism that prevents chaos and disorder by providing us with feelings of safety, certainty, and familiarity. Arguing that to account for the tendency of social order to be seen as normal we need to conceptualize trust as the routine background of everyday interaction, the article analyzes Goffman's concepts of normal appearances, stigma, and frames as devices for endowing social order with predictability, reliability, and legibility. For Goffman, normality is a collective achievement, which is possible because of the orderliness of interactional activities, which is-in turnpredicated "on a large base of shared cognitive presuppositions, if not normative ones, and self-sustained restraints" (Goffman 1983, American Sociological Review 48:1-53, p. 5 cited here).I will argue that Goffman's interaction order can be better understood if we consider it in the context of the relationship between normality and trust, each independently a very popular topic in social science literature. Goffman's central analytical constructions, normal appearances, stigma, and frame, play the essential function in securing the predictability, reliability, and legibility of order. Because such order has a tendency to be perceived as normal, it is conducive to the formation of trust intention.Even a quick look at recent journals and newspapers reveals an explosion of interest in the idea of normality and the notion of !. As the modern world becomes increasingly unpredictable, formless, and complex, the growing desire for normality and trust attracts increasing attention from social scientists. Their research reveals that many societies are involved in a profound search for normality and that the deficit of trust becomes the dominant feature of many countries' cultures~Inglehart 1999!.The recent popularity of both the concept normality and the concept trust has not yet reduced ambiguities and conflictual claims surrounding those notions. Many researchers admit that the study of trust is fraught with problems of definition, confusion of the levels of analysis, and ambiguity in conceptualizations of the factors responsible for trust production~Kramer and Tyler 1996!. The notion of normality is also not well conceptualized, as many writers talk about normality only in general terms. Moreover, the relationships between normality and trust have not yet become the focus of sociologists' attention.Despite all these difficulties, there has been an impressive proliferation of middle-range theories about trust as well as increasing interest in the topic of normality~Baier 1986; The majority of researchers writing about trust focus their attention primarily on how one may set about creating and fostering trust in the context of various recent changes, and they tend to embed the notions of vulnerability, uncertainty, and risk in their definitions of

The paper argues that although Durkheim did not explicitly employ the notion of collective memory, his approach offers a very insightful understanding of the need for historical continuity. Durkheim's belief that every society displays and requires a sense of continuity with the past and that the past confers identity on individuals and groups allows us to see collective memory as one of the elementary forms of social life. The paper presents Durkheim's discussion of commemorative rituals in early societies, where he directly addresses the notion of social memory, which is seen as perpetuated by religious rites and as a means of ensuring shared morality and social cohesion. His conceptualization of the role of law and memory in sustaining organic solidarity is also considered. In conclusion it is discussed whether Durkheim's understanding of social memory provides us with relevant means to interpret social processes of remembering in today's societies.

The current deficit of trust in the working of democracy has been attracting the increasing attention of social scientists. Nevertheless, there is still a conspicuous lack of an integrative theory of trust. Existing literature is united in its recognition that the preferable democratic order should be rooted in trust relations. This assertion that democracy and trust are connected is based on the assumption that either civil society or institutional frameworks are prerequisite for achieving a healthy and stable democracy. This article argues that the communitarian and republican solutions to the deficit of trust should supplement each other. Only joint implementation of these two strategies for recovering trust can activate formal and informal mechanisms of trust production. A society that achieves an appropriate balance between the informality and formality of interactional practices is the one able to create conditions for cooperation and engagement in the public sphere.

This article reconstructs and evaluates prevalent assumptions in the literature about links between collective memory and democracy. There are widespread assertions that memory is important for democratic community to achieve its potential, avoid dangers of past crimes, and secure its continuation. These assertions assume collective memory as a condition for freedom, justice, and the stability of democratic order. This article considers these assumptions with equally popular counterpropositions, arguing that memory presents a threat to democratic community because it can undermine cohesion, increase the costs of cooperation, and cause moral damage to civil society by conflating political and ethnic or cultural boundaries. The relationship between memory and democracy is discussed, along with the intermediate notions of identity, trauma, and ritual. The article concludes that what matters for democracy's health is not social remembering per se but the way in which the past is called up and made present.

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