Conspiracy theories (CTs) are widespread ways by which people make sense of unsettling or disturbing cultural events. Belief in CTs is often connected to problematic consequences, such as decreased engagement with conventional political action or even political extremism, so understanding the psychological and social qualities of CTs belief is important. CTs have often been understood to be “monological”, displaying the tendency for belief in one conspiracy theory to be correlated with belief in (many) others. Explanations of monologicality invoke a nomothetical or “closed” mindset whereby mutually supporting beliefs based on mistrust of official explanations are used to interpret public events as conspiracies, independent of the facts about those events (which they may ignore or deny). But research on monologicality offers little discussion of the content of monological beliefs and reasoning from the standpoint of the CT believers. This is due in part to the “access problem” (Wood & Douglas, 2015): CT believers are averse to being researched because they often distrust researchers and what they appear to represent. We used several strategies to address the access problem, and investigated the symbolic resources underlying CTs by reconstructing a conspiracy worldview - a set of beliefs held by CT believers about important dimensions of ontology, epistemology, and human agency. To do this, we analysed media documents, conducted field observation, and engaged in semi-structured interviews,. We describe six main dimensions of a conspiracy worldview: Views of the nature of reality, the self, the outgroup, the ingroup, action, and the future. We also describe a typology of five types of CT believers, which vary according to their positions on each of these dimensions. Our findings converge with prior explorations of CT beliefs but also revealed novel aspects: A sense of community among CT believers, a highly differentiated representation of the outgroup, a personal journey of conversion, variegated kinds of political action, and optimistic belief in future change. These findings are at odds with the typical image of monological CT believers as paranoid, cynical, anomic and irrational. For many, the CT worldview may rather constitute the ideological underpinning of a nascent pre-figurative social movement.

/pdf/beyond-monologicality-exploring-conspiracist-worldviews-1ysykjkex3.pdf

Beyond “Monologicality”? Exploring Conspiracist Worldviews

This article investigates educational experiences of transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) youth living in Northern Ireland (NI) through a mixed-methods research design and analytical framew...

/pdf/living-a-fairy-tale-the-educational-experiences-of-1oskkb8e4a.pdf

Living a fairy tale: the educational experiences of transgender and gender non-conforming youth in Northern Ireland

Considered one of the most intractable conflicts in history, hostilities between Palestine and Israel have been ongoing sporadically for 67 years and counting, since the formation of the Israeli state in 1948. The impact of a continuous state of war has left the Palestinian health system in a chronic state of disarray. Jimmy Carter, former American President declared,

Medical Care in Palestine: Working in a Conflict Zone.

This article advances a methodological argument on how to do ethnographic fieldwork amid social elites and inaccessible bureaucracies in international politics. Instead of participant observation or semi-structured interviews, the article proposes “hanging out” as an alternative strategy to generate immersion and ethnographic insight. While the ethnographer studying “down” is arguably always “hanging out” (the village as the exemplary mise-en-scene of this genre), this technique takes a more defined form when studying “up” elites. Specifically, hanging out when studying “up” is a strategy where the fieldworker commits to a period of continuous residence amid members of a community; engages in ludic, informal, and often sociable interactions outside or at the sidelines of their professional habitats; and participates in a range of activities where building rapport is as important as the primary goals of the research. I illustrate this methodological strategy and its payoffs by reflecting upon a year of fieldwork among the diplomats and bureaucrats of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations—an informal, quiet, and often sub rosa diplomatic project run by a band of mostly authoritarian states in Southeast Asia. This article contributes to debates on the viability of ethnographic fieldwork in international relations (IR); advances a methodological corrective to fieldwork prescriptions in new micropolitical studies of practice, interactions, and emotions in IR; and offers a practical illustration of what studying “up” looks like in diplomacy and international politics.

http://academic.oup.com/isr/advance-article-pdf/doi/10.1093/isr/viab001/36442623/viab001.pdf

“Hanging Out” while Studying “Up”: Doing Ethnographic Fieldwork in International Relations

The photograph depicts a caged-in concrete walkway. Chain-link fences flank each of its sides. Some 12 feet upwards, they curve inwards towards each other and meet to form a ceiling, a gated canopy...

Ruari McBride

Papers

Politically sensitive encounters: Ethnography, access and the benefits of ‘hanging out’