Jaron Harambam

Contesting epistemic authority: Conspiracy theories on the boundaries of science.

Conspiracy theories are immensely popular today, yet in the social sciences they are often dismissed as “irrational,” “bad science,” or “religious belief.” In this study, we take a cultural sociological approach and argue that this persistent disqualification is a form of “boundary work” that obscures rather than clarifies how and why conspiracy theorists challenge the epistemic authority of science. Based on a qualitative study of the Dutch conspiracy milieu, we distinguish three critiques that are motivated by encounters with scientific experts in everyday life: the alleged dogmatism of modern science, the intimate relation of scientific knowledge production with vested interests, and the exclusion of lay knowledge by scientific experts forming a global “power elite.” Given their critique that resonates with social scientific understandings of science, it is concluded that conspiracy theorists compete with (social) scientists in complex battles for epistemic authority in a broader field of knowledge contestation.

Game over? Negotiating modern capitalism in virtual game worlds

Johan Huizinga’s claim that commercialization threatens the self-enclosed ‘magic circle’ of free play still permeates many contemporary games studies. Critiquing such generalizing and essentialistic assumptions, this article distinguishes four different ‘orders of commercialization’ that impinge on online game worlds and studies empirically how each of these is evaluated and negotiated by players themselves. Based on an analysis of World of Warcraft and Second Life, it demonstrates that some orders of commercialization — that is, the game itself as a commodity and the construction of its world as a virtual marketplace — are compatible with free play since they enhance players’ in-game agency. Other orders of commercialization — that is, ‘real money trading’ and the colonization of the game world by multinationals — are experienced as commodifying and undermine the spirit of play. Contextualization is called for: while some orders of commercialization threaten the ‘magic circle’ of free play, others stimulate or facilitate it.

THE CONTENTIOUS GAP: From digital divide to cultural beliefs about online interactions

With the rise and widespread application of the internet, social scientists rapidly emphasized that some people were better able to gain control over these technologies than others. This so-called digital divide between the haves and the have-nots was seen as a new feature of contemporary inequality – as a reproduction or transformation of existing social disparities. Motivated by these concerns about social inequality, it is argued in this paper, research on the digital divide has been theoretically and empirically blinkered. Even though the focus changed from simplistic questions of having access or not, towards the more informative dimension of usage and skills, the same socio-economic bias was maintained. In this paper, we therefore theorize that appropriating the internet (or not) is less related to socio-economic position or usage and skills, and is more culturally informed than theories about a digital divide allow for. To empirically test our assumptions, we used the internet-based community project ‘Telebrink’ as a case study for our quantitative and qualitative research. Based on a survey among Dutch citizens involved in this project (N = 251), we studied the explanations for (not) using these applications by testing hypotheses about the influence of skills and knowledge on the one hand and culture, i.e. moral evaluations of online social life, on the other. Our statistical analyses show that cultural attitudes, i.e. moral beliefs regarding social interaction, are most strongly explaining the appropriation of social internet technologies. Enriched with our qualitative data confirming those results, it is concluded that how people feel and think about this technology in social life is of major importance. In short: culture matters!

Inleiding: Monsters in de sociologie. De wondere wereld van ANT

Dit themanummer verkent de waarde van actor-netwerk theorie (ANT) voor de sociologie. Met behulp van casestudies, interviews, conversaties en columns beogen wij de empirische sensibiliteit voor praktijken en objecten die ANT kenmerkt inzichtelijk te maken, en deze te relateren aan de sociologie. Daarmee is dit themanummer geen representatie van ANT, en ook over de relatie van ANT met de sociologie wil het geen eindoordeel vellen. Wel wil het nieuwe vragen oproepen, en hoopt het de nieuwsgierigheid van ons publiek te prikkelen. Wat kan een nauwgezette aandacht voor objecten en praktijken ons nu opleveren? En - de keerzijde van de medaille - wat eist op haar beurt een dergelijke sensibiliteit van ons?

Rational Enchantments: Conspiracy Theory between Secular Scepticism and Spiritual Salvation

In the social sciences, conspiracy theory is often morally debunked as pathological, irrational and dangerous and, essentially, considered a form of ‘religious superstition’. Arguing that this simplistic labelling of conspiracy theory as ‘religious belief’ is primarily a form of ‘boundary work’ to legitimate the epistemic authority of the social sciences, this chapter studies the hybrid character of contemporary conspiracy theory based on the self-understanding of its advocates. The analysis shows that conspiracy culture is an unstable, multi-faced phenomenon that is situated at the intersection of three discourses: secular scepticism, popular sociology, and spiritual salvation. Mixing up secular science and spiritual salvation and simultaneously assessing how the world ‘is’ and how it ‘ought’ to be, may be a horror to academics; for conspiracy theorists it is having the best of both worlds.