These developments in the explanation of the basic traits and the conditions generating different interpersonal relations point out a crucial fact, already mentioned at the end of the first chapter, that all such relations tend to construct a realm of intimacy, trust or participation in a spiritual realm beyond the major institutionalised spheres of a society – particularly, but not only, that of kinship – in which trust is seemingly most fully articulated. Such construction is based on the search for participation in the realm of pure, pristine, spiritual significance, and on the tensions between such search and the ‘mundane’ institutional realm. These tensions are indeed central not only to the definition of these relations, but also with respect to the explanation of the contexts within which the construction of such relations takes place and of the conditions which lead people to engage in such relations.

Thus, from all the vantage points, the central problem at the core of the analysis of friendship, ritual personal and clientelistic relations is the one of the construction and institutionalisation of trust and meaning in the social order and the ambivalent attitude to such institutionalisation that pervades these relationships.

The combination of the classical and the more recent theoretical discussions as well as the abundant new research data enables us to understand not only the fundamental importance of trust in social relations but also the possible roots of the ambivalence of the interweaving of trust with the institutional structure as well as the concrete mechanisms through which such interweaving is effected.