Politics After The Pandemic
Politics After The Pandemic
The Anthropology of Conspiracy Theory
One feature of post-pandemic politics is controversy over “conspiracy theory”. What makes a theory a conspiracy theory? Why are they so popular? Who deploys the phrase and to what end? Providing an accessible tour through the social science of power and ideology, Lagalisse and Drążkiewicz offer a mini-series on “conspiracy theory” as a form of social critique that indexes broad mistrust in institutions and the state, and why scholars of the Global North treat paranoia about corruption differently when it’s found at home. Together they explore the differences between “conspiracy theory” of state power and accepted “social theory” of the same, and what the social sciences can tell us about the possibility of an all-knowing elite.
This first episode explores “conspiracy theory” by also introducing anthropology, explaining what it means to study “conspiracy theory” as both an objective category and an “ethnographic” one.
Find more about Politics After the Pandemic at The Sociological Review.
Credits:
Executive Producer & Host: Erica Lagalisse
Guest: Elżbieta Drążkiewicz
Sound Engineer: Clara-Swan Kennedy
Illustrator: Laura Arlotti
Musicians: Excerpts from AV materials submitted to the Solidarity and Care During the Covid-19 Pandemic publishing platform and research archive:
- "The Lightwell (Boşluk)", by Begüm Özden Fırat, Sound mix: Sair Sinan Kestelli (Independent film, Turkey, 2020), published at Solidarity and Care During the Covid-19 Pandemic, Dec. 2020.
- "Know place like home: The 82.3m2 Project" — Dan Lovesey, autistic musician who crafted soundscape of domestic recordings during lockdown, published at Solidarity and Care During the Covid-19 Pandemic, 31 August, 2020.
- “Walking Through Lockdown – An Exercise in Care” by Kim Harding, who took soundscape recordings of South London during lockdown, published at Solidarity and Care During the Covid-19 Pandemic, July 22, 2022.
Additional open source audio elements from freesound.org users Halima Ahkdar and Graham Makes.
Erica Lagalisse’s book is Occult Features of Anarchism (2019, PM Press). You can watch her Public Lecture at the London School of Economics or her festival appearance as the debunker of “conspiracy theory” David Dyke
Elżbieta Drążkiewicz’s book is Institutionalised Dreams: The Art of Managing Foreign Aid (Begrhahahn, 2020). You can also read her essay, co-authored with Lisa Sobo, “Rights, responsibilities and revelations: COVID-19 conspiracy theories and the state.” in Viral Loads: Anthropologies of urgency in the time of COVID-19 (UCL, 2021).
Find extended reading lists and learn more about Politics After the Pandemic at The Sociological Review
With the COVID 19 pandemic trailing off into continuous infection, the normalisation of profit over care, and a curtailing of rights to assembly privacy and protest, social justice movements face a new series of challenges. You're listening to Politics After The Pandemic, where we think transnationally with social scientists and political activists about recent cultural shifts and their relation to COVID-19, capitalism and other structures of oppression, and how social movements, educators and researchers might respond. I'm Erica Lagalisse, an anthropologist of social movements and your host as editor at the Sociological Review and researcher at the London School of Economics and the Anarchism Research Group at Loughborough University.
Anon:Sound of local activists in Ottawa, Canada.
Erica Lagalisse:That was the sound of local activists in Ottawa, Canada last February challenging the arrival of the so called "Freedom Convoy" of truckers and others who gathered to protest the implementation of a nationwide vaccination passport. "Go home" they yelled– calling the convoy participant a conspiracy theorist. One important feature of post pandemic politics in many places– perhaps especially throughout the Global North – is controversy over the question of conspiracy theory. But what makes a theory a conspiracy theory? Why are they so popular? Also who deploys the phrase"conspiracy theory" and to what political effect? All of these are important questions to ask in any inquiry into politics after the pandemic, because of the political Right has captured a lot of ground in many places during the pandemic. It is not only because many people have come to believe unreasonable conspiracy theories – which has also happened – but also because now, even the scepticism traditional on the left of government, corporate media and the pharmaceutical industry is now easily made unrespectable by association with irrational and dangerous conspiracy thinking. The contention over the category of conspiracy theory is highly charged. And for all of these reasons, we're devoting our first 3 episodes to bringing some critical social science into the mix. It's a tricky topic, but I can handle it. One of the reasons I'm here and hosting this particular podcast is because I published a work of public anthropology about conspiracy theory in 2019. It was called a "Occult Features of Anarchism" with attention to the conspiracy of kings and the conspiracy of the peoples. It's an intersectional study of contemporary anarchists social movements in the Americas, based on my larger work "Good politics" – property, intersectionality, and the making of the anarchist self" –"Occult Features of Anarchism" is based off the history chapter of that dissertation. One line of argument in the book considers the racialized and gendered construction of anarchist politics in historical context in relation to clandestine fraternities, and another develops a class critique of how a university student anarchist activist dealt with conspiracy theory or not in the era just after 911. The book was positioned as a cautionary tale, directed to social movements saying – Hey, guys, I know all of you proper lefties think this conspiracy theory business is very silly, but if we don't find a way to deal with this, it's gonna be a problem – And here we are. And wow, do I ever get some interesting invitations now! I spent the summer doing popular education on conspiracy theory at Psychedelic Trance festivals. And I won't talk much more about that now. But if you do want to get a better sense of my own work, then check out the book. And also if you're specifically interested in the topic of how to do public anthropology or public sociology – then do follow the links on the podcast web page to enjoy and compare my public lecture at the London School of Economics on "The Occult Features of Anarchism" with the version delivered by David Dyke and the Supreme Magus of the kitchen garden at rave parties this summer. But first, we have to cover some basics. We're going to do that by chatting with my colleague Ela Drążkiewicz fellow anthropologist and researcher of conspiracy theory. Ela received her PhD at Cambridge where she studied the politics of foreign aid before going on to become a senior research fellow at the Institute for Sociology at the Slovak Academy of Sciences, where she now focuses on Conspiracy Theories. Ela will soon be leading a European Research Council grant examining conflicts over conspiracy theories in Europe as well as researching how new forms of digitalization shape the form, content and consequences of conspiracy theories. I started our interview by asking Ela if she could tell us what an anthropological take on conspiracy theory looks like.
Elżbieta Drazkiewitz:I think in some regards, our take does not differ much from that taken by other scholars. Like others we look at conspiracy theories as form of narratives, meaning making exercises, where people perceive world as a space where hidden powers – some malicious actors conspire against other people in, to harm them. And very often, the idea is that they conspire, not against individual but against a group – a race, gender, ethnicity, against a group expressing certain beliefs, you know, certain religious group – are conspiring against a way of life. So this is where we – most of us agree that this is, this kind of conspiratorial mind where you are constantly suspicious of hidden powers and hidden forces. But I think where we are differ from other disciplines – especially psychology – is in our interest in that phenomenon, what we are interested in. And we are less interested in understanding individuals who believe in conspiracy theories. And we are more interested in groups who express those beliefs and what happens between people who believe or endorse conspiracy theories – why they do that, and what happens between those people and people in power and other groups.
Erica Lagalisse:Right, right, right. Yeah, no, thank you. That's exactly what I wanted to explain. By having an interest in group – as opposed to individuals. So what we're doing is, we're trying to find out how and why conspiracy theories do make sense in cultural context, right? Like, rather than beginning with the idea that they're necessarily indicative of, – let's say, pathological psychology – we understand that they often index perceived ruptures in the social contract– is how you put it in your paper, I really liked that.
Elżbieta Drazkiewitz:Maybe because as anthropologists, we have always been interested as a discipline in different forms of knowledge – non-normative, non-western form of knowledge, witchcraft, sorcery, rumour, urban legends, myths. So I think because of that, we have perhaps a little bit of more patience – if that's a good word – for conspiracy theories than colleagues in other disciplines, because, because of the history of anthropology, because of our historical interest in non-normative forms of knowledge– such as rumour, or gossip, or urban legends, but also witchcraft, sorcery – because of that, we, we have more, perhaps, understanding to towards things which in the West are pathologized and ridiculed.
Erica Lagalisse:And this makes sense, its because of, in a way, it's because of this specific colonial history of anthropology, right? I mean, you talk a little bit in your paper about why conspiracy theory is treated this way and anthropology and how it's related to this colonial history– like beyond a general disciplinary concern, you know, with questions of historical and cultural context as explanatory mechanisms – there is the fact that anthropologists originally studied conspiracy theory in colonial contexts. And so that informs the disciplinary approach.
Elżbieta Drazkiewitz:Yes, I think that most of the work on conspiracy theories that is done by anthropologists has been done in spaces which are non western spaces – which are far from European or American, Australian centres. And in these spaces – where anthropologists are looking at conspiracy theories – they try to understand why people come up with those theories of suspicion, mistrust, and where they see a big design of a big plot of powerful actors. And they try to understand. they explained that perhaps it is – a lot of those theories are not always factual. But anthropologists can recognise that people who have been oppressed for a long time – where there are big power games at stake, where in societies where people went through big dramatic changes, where there is imbalance of power – people might come with such explanations – conspiratorial explanations – because this is what they have that is closest to truth. So for instance, the good example might be that we might have seen in South Africa or in other African locations – we might have people who are concerned about vaccinations are who are concerned about HIV. And they might be seeing there is some hidden plot of Big Pharma or White capitalist powers who are coming to those locations to exploit people – to use them – as in the in the trials, in the medical trials. And even though there might be far from truth in a specific moment in history, there is something to those stories, because historically, there were examples of that. So people know of some facts from the past. And then they try to connect those different facts from the past with whatever is going on in their lives at that moment.
Erica Lagalisse:Right, because there is a rational basis to that sort of fear and analysis in general. It makes me think of other example in the paper of around the organ trade around how there's a lot of stories around blood and organ thieving, and how – even when these are not entirely substantiated – that they can easily be understood as allegories that index how colonised people understand themselves as fueling the global economy, and they do right with their blood and sweat and tears.
Elżbieta Drazkiewitz:The other thing I wanted to mention in here we can see how we can connect the stories coming from the Global South with the stories coming from the Global East because this is also where a lot of research on conspiracy theories in anthropology took place. Right here, there are some connectivities and some similarities and there is work also done on vaccination hesitancy. For instance, by Christina Pöpper – she also talks about vaccine hesitancy in Romania, where people refuse to participate in HPV vaccine immunisation scheme – because they see this medical technology as a exemplification of corruption of state using women– of external powers using people for their own advantage. And I think this is interesting because it shows some similarities and connectivity. So of people around the world – Global East and Global South – those so called peripheries. But it also shows interesting moments of agency where we tend to think people who express conspiracy theories as passive, right – there is this stereotypical image of a person hiding in a basement and sitting in front of the computer doing nothing else. But actually conspiracy theories very often translate into action and give people agency – even if that agency means they will not take vaccination, right? It's a stamp, it's an action. So they're not just passive listeners to those sort of theories or spreaders of theories – it can, it leads to action, there is some performativity there as well.
Erica Lagalisse:Right, sure, sure. A lot of contexts conspiracy theory does constitute a critique of the state and that came through in the case studies that you did as well that these critiques are different in different places, because states are different in different places. But wherever you have the conspiracy theory emerging you, you have distrust of the state right? And that's why people are coming up with the ideas they are. That was me speaking with Ela Drążkiewicz, starting to look into the anthropology of conspiracy theory. Is conspiracy theory explained by mental illness or pathology in the believer? – or do conspiracy theories index ruptures in a social contract, a legitimate distrust of institutions. If conspiracy theory is a critique of state pathology, why does it seem misguided to so many people who critique the state for a living –whether that be my social scientists, colleagues or the activists in my social movements research? One common critique is that conspiracy theories uncompelling because it approaches global power, as if it is an entirely streamlined system was total orchestration, topping exactly one extremely pointy pyramid. A conspiracy theory is unsatisfying because it attributes too much agency to people in positions of power, and suggests that history might have unfolded differently if it were not for the activity of relatively few ill willed conspirators. In this sense, conspiracy theory is a problem because it resembles what historians sometimes call a voluntarist approach. History. Karl Popper makes this point in one of the earliest published critiques. Orthodox social theory prefers systemic analysis– like structural or post structural analyses of social change – where history unfolds due to relatively impersonal forces, things like Marx's dialectic, or Foucault's idea of discourse. Social scientists will also grant the people have the power to change the world, but usually understand social change to rely on the collective action of large groups. It's understood that broad forms of material and ideological cooperation are required to maintain status quo – or change it. The classic claim here is that to overturn it, the oppressed must share class consciousness. But whether we're talking about the traditional Marxist category of the working class, or later feminist and postcolonial reworkings of this theory of knowledge – it's understood that the dominant group, yes, will tailor and promote ruling ideas that are convenient to their ongoing dominance, but also that many of these ideas mystify power relations – even among members of the dominant group – such that not even they are fully aware of what they're doing and why. You ever heard people complaining about conspiracy theory do it like this? Like, say like "it's not as if it's a big plan, like people are purposefully created... purposely looking to hurt them? They're just going to work in the morning". Yes, exactly. That's materialist analysis right there. Like in social science, we could almost say that the ruling class conspires– except that in most social scientific analysis, no one individual has the complete knowledge of the totality required to see the big picture and plot a decisive intervention. A social scientific approach stresses the way systemic forces and power structures affect possibilities for individual and collective agency such that no one person's ideas and actions can be understood as entirely voluntary. And yes, I'm a theory nerd. And yes, this is a podcast about power and social theory packaged into a study of conspiracy theory. And it couldn't be any other way, right? Because if we don't like conspiracy theories of power – presumably it's because we prefer some other kind. But let's not get ahead of myself. And the next two episodes, we continue to talk about conspiracy theory with my colleague, Ela –first about her study of conspiracy theories during the COVID 19 pandemic in Ireland, Poland and the United States, and what comes out of cross cultural analysis in this case. And then we talked about the relationship of conspiracy theory to modernity, class and class respectability. On that note, we're going to sign off here by sharing with you a longer audio clip of that argument in Ottawa, Canada last year. On the website, you can see a picture of this encounter as well if you want to have a look. The counter protesters are university students of colour clustered together, standing up to this large white conspiracy theorist man who's waving a cigar around as he speaks and is quite domineering in approach and indeed, not entirely convincing. But does he also believe in Bigfoot because he doesn't trust the World Health Organisation? Maybe part of our homework for next time is to also think about that. Thank you for listening everyone.
Anon:Sound of local activists in Ottawa, Canada, on Billings Bridge.
Clara-Swan Kennedy:Politics After The Pandemic is brought to you by the Sociological Review Foundation in collaboration with the British Academy as part of the special section Solidarity and Care During the COVID 19 Pandemic. Erica Lagalisse is an anthropologist and researcher at the London School of Economics and Loughborough University, and author of the book "Occult Features of Anarchism".
