A recent article named “Fiduciary Relationships” written by our researcher Jordi Mundó revisits the concept of fiduciary relationships, a legal and ethical framework with roots in Roman law that regulates asymmetrical relations of trust and responsibility.
Traditionally, fiduciary relationships describe situations where one party (the fiduciary or trustee) must act on behalf of another (the beneficiary), preventing the former from acting in his or her own interest and prioritizing the latter’s interests. While law, bioethics, political philosophy, and economics have long engaged with this idea, sociology has rarely addressed it explicitly.
Mundó argues that incorporating a fiduciary perspective can enrich sociological analysis of economic and social life. By examining property relations through a fiduciary lens, he shows how legal, economic, political, and cultural dimensions intersect, offering a more integrated view of trust, governance, and accountability.
The article goes further, suggesting that fiduciary thinking may provide a much-needed framework for addressing today’s environmental crises. As a philosopher and social scientist, Mundó advocates an interdisciplinary approach to finding solutions to such complex problems. Proposals such as Earth trusteeship, which understands states and institutions as custodians of natural systems for the common good, highlight how fiduciary duties could extend beyond interpersonal relations to the governance of global commons.
This approach reframes sustainability not just as a technical or economic issue, but as a fiduciary obligation: a duty to preserve ecosystems, biodiversity, and natural resources for future generations. By recovering and adapting this enduring idea, Mundó suggests sociology can contribute to building fairer and more responsible institutions at both local and global levels.
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