Anthropology, Western polite society, and the conspiracy-theory taboo
franciscogilwhite.substack.com
Taboos reveal fundamental organizing values in a society. Taboos can force people to bear enormous costs. Among the university-educated in the West, conspiracy theory is taboo. This taboo organizes an interesting social grammar, here described. In modern democratic societies the term ‘conspiracy theory’ generally refers to Machiavellian hypotheses: claims about powerful actors who—either in secret or in a narratively camouflaged manner—work to wreck democratic institutions and citizen rights.
Anthropology, Western polite society, and the conspiracy-theory taboo
Anthropology, Western polite society, and the…
Anthropology, Western polite society, and the conspiracy-theory taboo
Taboos reveal fundamental organizing values in a society. Taboos can force people to bear enormous costs. Among the university-educated in the West, conspiracy theory is taboo. This taboo organizes an interesting social grammar, here described. In modern democratic societies the term ‘conspiracy theory’ generally refers to Machiavellian hypotheses: claims about powerful actors who—either in secret or in a narratively camouflaged manner—work to wreck democratic institutions and citizen rights.