An anthropological study of truth wars from marginalized standpoints

ongoing

In today’s age of post-normal science and fragmentation of the public sphere, truth itself has become an increasingly contentious and contested concept. De-CRIPT will introduce theoretical and methodological innovations into research on truth-making processes to expand current understandings of the nexus between controversial truth claims (particularly those labelled conspiracy narratives) and socioeconomic disadvantage. Comparing four paradigmatic communities subject to longstanding or newly-emerging processes of downwards social mobility across four different countries of Western Europe, the project seeks to understand: - the conflicts between mainstream and conspiracist discourses in the online sphere and in everyday offline interactions; - the conditions that make controversial truth claims acceptable or appealing among disadvantaged groups; - connections and disconnections between the communicative intentions of the main creators and propagators of controversial truth claims online, on the one side, and the pragmatic uses of the same claims by ordinary social actors in everyday life, on the other. Theoretically, De-CRIPT will introduce into research on truth-making processes: 1) the philosophical tradition of pragmatism (with its linguistic and sociological legacies) in order to focus on social actors’ pragmatic uses of truth claims to justify their practices and/or produce specific effects, and 2) a feminist epistemological lens, which examines processes of knowledge production and circulation by paying attention to different forms of oppression, in order to expand current understandings of the conditions of acceptability of controversial truth claims among low-status groups. Methodologically, it will be the first comparative study whose empirical focus will encompass both conspiracy narratives and the narratives opposing them, across both digital and non-digital environments, by combining critical discourse analysis of online sources and feminist ethnography.