Möllering has argued for sociological research on trust that pays attention to the ‘fine details of interpretation’ and begins from the perspectives of those engaged in relations of trust. In this article we explore what it would mean to take up Möllering’s challenge to explore the interpretative elements of trust and the ‘leaps of faith’ trusting entails.We do this through an empirical study of parental and professional talk about the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccination. We examine trust as operating in a number of interrelated ways: as a practice based on knowledge; as a ‘leap of faith’ experienced through relationality and familiarity; as working at a system level; and as shaped by relations of governance and by anxieties to do with the nature of social and technological change. Through this analysis, we suggest how an interpretive approach to thinking about trust is a worthwhile exercise.

Cervical screening has been subject to extensive scrutiny within the social sciences over the last two decades. Moreover, it has been described, in passing, as an example of 'surveillance medicine' through which new aspects of people's lives are brought under medical scrutiny. Cervical screening is an example of secondary prevention with which women, on the whole, are expected and encouraged to comply, in what are deemed to be their best interests. However, the social science literature on cervical screening tends to present compliance as a morally neutral and unproblematic response to information about disease prevention. In contrast, this paper seeks to illustrate how women draw on specific contexts and relationships through which participation in, or compliance with screening, is given meaning. Drawing on women's accounts of their experience of screening participation, the paper suggests that compliance with cervical screening cannot be viewed exclusively as a morally neutral, if desirable, outcome of disease prevention initiatives, but may also be embedded within a moral framework of selfresponsibility and social obligation.