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Contemporary Conspiracy Culture
In this ethnographic study, the author takes an agnostic stance towards the truth value of conspiracy theories and delves into the everyday lives of people active in the conspiracy milieu to understand better what the contemporary appeal of conspiracy theories is. Conspiracy theories have become popular cultural products, endorsed and shared by significant segments of Western societies. Yet our understanding of who these people are and why they are attracted by these alternative explanations of reality is hampered by their implicit and explicit pathologization. Drawing on a wide variety of empirical sources, this book shows in rich detail what conspiracy theories are about, which people are involved, how they see themselves, and what they practically do with these ideas in their everyday lives. The author inductively develops from these concrete descriptions more general theorizations of how to understand this burgeoning subculture. He concludes by situating conspiracy culture in an age of epistemic instability where societal conflicts over knowledge abound, and the Truth is no longer assured, but "out there" for us to grapple with. This book will be an important source for students and scholars from a range of disciplines interested in the depth and complexity of conspiracy culture, including Anthropology, Cultural Studies, Communication Studies, Ethnology, Folklore Studies, History, Media Studies, Political Science, Psychology and Sociology. More broadly, this study speaks to contemporary (public) debates about truth and knowledge in a supposedly post-truth era, including widespread popular distrusts towards elites, mainstream institutions and their knowledge.
254 pages, Hardcover
Published May 14, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 25, 2023
Conspiracy theories are anathema to many self-styled rational observers of politics and culture. This study sets out to examine the phenomenon from a neutral standpoint. The author, interestingly, is Dutch, and his researches show remarkable congruity with the American version of it. The commonalities among conspiracy believers include: that there is one truth that only the initiated see; that the uninitiated are sheeple brainwashed by the media; the world is run by a small number of shady, evil people (billionaires, Bilderbergers, and CIA/FBI officials), and so forth.
Extreme conspiracy believers hold strange takes from the fringes: that no planes crashed on 9/11, that no one died at Sandy Hook, that the Apollo moon missions were a hoax. The extremists accept no size, resource, or complexity limits on the deceptions the would-be world state or string pulling cabal can perpetrate from the shadows. To them, maintaining secrecy is easy: everyone involved in a massive deception can be easily bought off or otherwise pressured into silence, and there never seem to be leakers or whistle blowers.
According to Mr. Harambam, moderate conspiracy thinking at least has the virtue of looking at power structures critically. Some of that, he conjectures, could turn into constructive skepticism.
Extreme conspiracy believers hold strange takes from the fringes: that no planes crashed on 9/11, that no one died at Sandy Hook, that the Apollo moon missions were a hoax. The extremists accept no size, resource, or complexity limits on the deceptions the would-be world state or string pulling cabal can perpetrate from the shadows. To them, maintaining secrecy is easy: everyone involved in a massive deception can be easily bought off or otherwise pressured into silence, and there never seem to be leakers or whistle blowers.
According to Mr. Harambam, moderate conspiracy thinking at least has the virtue of looking at power structures critically. Some of that, he conjectures, could turn into constructive skepticism.
October 9, 2020
pros
- really interesting topic
- definitely lot of work went in there
- the author definitely knows his stuff and has looked at the problem from many angles
cons
- Too many repetitions (in particular caused by too many conclusions of conclusions of conclusions... the book is too short for that kind of thing, in my view). problem is compounded by the fact that it comes across as collection of research journal articles, but for this kind of book to work, there should have been a much more thorough editing work to streamline them and make them repetition-free and flow smoothly
- Much of the research detail outlined in the book would have been more effective in some sort of appendix (though I realize that it may be a taste thing - it ultimately feels like more real estate was used to describe the methodology than the actual results)
- I am not a big fan of the author's repeated use of 'I show' or 'I showed' - it comes across as slightly arrogant to me, because many readers may actually disagree with that. It implies that the arguments were 'successful' which is kind of presumptive as the ultimate arbiter of their success is the reader (whose views, I propose the author has no insight on).
- It's a bit frustrating, because although at one point I felt the author nailed the central debate point between the different factions of basically what is or is not 'science', the issue is not developed further in depth. Perhaps the author felt that it was not the main topic of the book, but I came out of it thinking otherwise.
bottom line
- it's a worthwhile effort but it really is the kind of book, where a 'coles-notes' 10-page summary will probably give one 99% of the story without sacrificing much
- really interesting topic
- definitely lot of work went in there
- the author definitely knows his stuff and has looked at the problem from many angles
cons
- Too many repetitions (in particular caused by too many conclusions of conclusions of conclusions... the book is too short for that kind of thing, in my view). problem is compounded by the fact that it comes across as collection of research journal articles, but for this kind of book to work, there should have been a much more thorough editing work to streamline them and make them repetition-free and flow smoothly
- Much of the research detail outlined in the book would have been more effective in some sort of appendix (though I realize that it may be a taste thing - it ultimately feels like more real estate was used to describe the methodology than the actual results)
- I am not a big fan of the author's repeated use of 'I show' or 'I showed' - it comes across as slightly arrogant to me, because many readers may actually disagree with that. It implies that the arguments were 'successful' which is kind of presumptive as the ultimate arbiter of their success is the reader (whose views, I propose the author has no insight on).
- It's a bit frustrating, because although at one point I felt the author nailed the central debate point between the different factions of basically what is or is not 'science', the issue is not developed further in depth. Perhaps the author felt that it was not the main topic of the book, but I came out of it thinking otherwise.
bottom line
- it's a worthwhile effort but it really is the kind of book, where a 'coles-notes' 10-page summary will probably give one 99% of the story without sacrificing much
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews