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Scientific knowledge has been under attack recently, especially during and from the Trump administration. This article discusses the value of research in social studies of science in relation to scientific practice and post‐truth attacks on science. This literature analyzes the expert work and social values that enter into the production of evidence, the development and testing of methods, and the construction of theoretical and epistemological frames for connecting evidence, methods, and methodologies. Although researchers in this area argue that there are politics in science, this article demonstrates that their analyses of the processes of adjudicating evidence and epistemologies contribute to science. In contrast, post‐truth attacks on scientific expertise exemplify a particular kind of politics aimed at supporting a particular group's political and economic interests.
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“I’m Not a Conspiracy Theorist, But…”: Knowledge and Conservative Politics in Unsettled Times
Abstract How does conspiracist thinking become appealing to its adherents, and with what political consequences? Drawing on fifty in-depth interviews with gun sellers from April 2020 to August 2020, this paper examines conspiracist thinking among US conservatives. We present a sociological account that follows historian Richard Hofstadter’s early account in theorizing conspiracist thinking as a “style” of politics on the Right. Turning to the sociology of culture and political sociology, we examine conspiracist thinking as a tool of political sense-making that becomes particularly appealing during “unsettled” insecurity. We focus on conservative adherents to conspiracist thinking, examining how conspiracist thinking is mobilized to assert feelings of control and certainty in ways that reinforce allegiance to conservative values and repudiation of partisan opponents. Specifically, we theorize conspiracist thinking as an everyday practice of meaning-making (an epistemological practice) which responds to conditions of unsettled insecurity that reflects existing conservative “modes of thought” (e.g., anti-elitist skepticism) and also reinforces conservative sentiments through two mechanisms: epistemological individualism and epistemological othering. Extending existing accounts of conspiracism, our analysis illuminates how conspiracist thinking—as an active, and self-reinforcing, struggle for epistemological control amid contexts of information scarcity and uncertainty—has come to shape American politics from the bottom up.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1947287
- PAR ID:
- 10412330
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Social Forces
- Volume:
- 101
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 0037-7732
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1658 to 1681
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soac082
