{"title":"The Federal Contract: A Constitutional Theory of Federalism , Stephen Tierney. Oxford University Press, 2022","authors":"Jan Smoleński","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12697","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8675.12697","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"31 1","pages":"122-124"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135543013","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Democratize Work: The Case for Reorganizing the Economy , Isabelle Ferreras, Julie Battilana, and Dominique Méda. University of Chicago Press, 2022","authors":"Jean-Phillipe Deranty*","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12689","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8675.12689","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"30 3","pages":"364-366"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-05-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43047640","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
<p>I address the question of human agency from the perspective of critical social theory. Critical social theories seek to change social reality for the better in an ethical-political sense based on a critique of what is wrong with the existing one. Furthermore, they offer a perspective on changing social reality for the better that is attentive to historical, social, and geopolitical contexts. I start from the premise that the salient context today is anthropogenic ecological disaster on a global scale. I assume, furthermore, that <i>radical</i> changes are needed in order to arrest our current disastrous trajectory and, in the best case, redirect it. However, as things stand, human agents seem unable to bring about the radical changes that are required. As a first step toward remedying this, I postulate the need for a fundamental transformation of ethical perceptions, on both individual and collective levels: If humans globally are to grasp how the dominant modes of thinking and acting are ecologically disastrous, there has to be a radical shift in their ideas about the ethically good life.<sup>1</sup> Although the requisite shift in ethical perceptions will not, on its own, suffice for radical social change, I see it as its precondition. This leads me to propose a reimagined, rearticulated conception of human freedom as ecologically attuned, self-directing, self-transforming political agency.</p><p>For a number of years I have been concerned to reimagine and rearticulate the concept of freedom as a mode of ethically self-determining human agency in a democratic political context. In these reflections, my focus has been on self-directing agency as a distinctive form of <i>social</i> freedom, in the general sense of a mode of agency dependent on human relations within society. Recently, however, I have come to realize that this perspective is inadequate. It is insufficiently attuned to the multiple and complex relational contexts, nonhuman as well as human, in which humans exercise their agency.</p><p>The thesis driving my current endeavor is that the contemporary ecological disaster calls for a fundamental reconceptualization of human freedom as it has been understood by modern Western political thinking and embodied in everyday thought, behavior, and social practices. I offer a utopian vision of human agency, and the terms in which to articulate it, that would motivate a fundamental reorientation of thinking, behavior, and social practices globally. On a general level, I seek to show the importance at certain times in history of radical reimagining what it means to lead an ethically good life, and the need for new ethical-political vocabularies to accompany such reimaginings (Lear, <span>2008</span>). My specific aim is to create a new field of possibilities amidst the dire circumstances of ecological disaster in a context where it may seem impossible even to imagine what these might be.</p><p>I use the term “utopian” advisedly, in order to st
{"title":"Reenvisioning Freedom: Human Agency in Times of Ecological Disaster","authors":"Maeve Cooke","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12681","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8675.12681","url":null,"abstract":"<p>I address the question of human agency from the perspective of critical social theory. Critical social theories seek to change social reality for the better in an ethical-political sense based on a critique of what is wrong with the existing one. Furthermore, they offer a perspective on changing social reality for the better that is attentive to historical, social, and geopolitical contexts. I start from the premise that the salient context today is anthropogenic ecological disaster on a global scale. I assume, furthermore, that <i>radical</i> changes are needed in order to arrest our current disastrous trajectory and, in the best case, redirect it. However, as things stand, human agents seem unable to bring about the radical changes that are required. As a first step toward remedying this, I postulate the need for a fundamental transformation of ethical perceptions, on both individual and collective levels: If humans globally are to grasp how the dominant modes of thinking and acting are ecologically disastrous, there has to be a radical shift in their ideas about the ethically good life.<sup>1</sup> Although the requisite shift in ethical perceptions will not, on its own, suffice for radical social change, I see it as its precondition. This leads me to propose a reimagined, rearticulated conception of human freedom as ecologically attuned, self-directing, self-transforming political agency.</p><p>For a number of years I have been concerned to reimagine and rearticulate the concept of freedom as a mode of ethically self-determining human agency in a democratic political context. In these reflections, my focus has been on self-directing agency as a distinctive form of <i>social</i> freedom, in the general sense of a mode of agency dependent on human relations within society. Recently, however, I have come to realize that this perspective is inadequate. It is insufficiently attuned to the multiple and complex relational contexts, nonhuman as well as human, in which humans exercise their agency.</p><p>The thesis driving my current endeavor is that the contemporary ecological disaster calls for a fundamental reconceptualization of human freedom as it has been understood by modern Western political thinking and embodied in everyday thought, behavior, and social practices. I offer a utopian vision of human agency, and the terms in which to articulate it, that would motivate a fundamental reorientation of thinking, behavior, and social practices globally. On a general level, I seek to show the importance at certain times in history of radical reimagining what it means to lead an ethically good life, and the need for new ethical-political vocabularies to accompany such reimaginings (Lear, <span>2008</span>). My specific aim is to create a new field of possibilities amidst the dire circumstances of ecological disaster in a context where it may seem impossible even to imagine what these might be.</p><p>I use the term “utopian” advisedly, in order to st","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"30 2","pages":"119-127"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8675.12681","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41826903","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
<p>In recent years “the Anthropocene” has come to represent a new milestone for human-induced destruction of the environment. There is a widespread consensus that industrialization processes within capitalist modernity have ushered humanity into a new geological epoch bearing little resemblance to the climatic stability of “the Holocene,” the roughly 10,000-year span within which all known human civilizations were established. Furthermore, there is general agreement that the ending of climatic stability will have a devasting impact on the Earth's ecosystems, making long-term human settlement and global supply chains difficult, if not impossible, to maintain.</p><p>This Special Section aims to stimulate critical social theories to explore ways of thinking and acting that would equip us humans better to respond to the multiple challenges we face from the increasingly inescapable reach of ecological disaster. In all five contributions, “the Anthropocene” names a historical moment in which we must reconsider the very category of the human and our constitutive interdependencies with the other-than-human. Challenging the view that only humans possess intrinsic value, Arne Vetlesen calls on us to regard other-than-human beings as moral addressees in their own right. At the same time, he argues that only humans can be considered moral agents due to their powers of reflexivity, abstraction, imagination, and future oriented thinking. These powers make humans alone responsible for their actions. Although at first glance his asymmetric model may seem in tension with it, Vetlesen's argument resonates with Maeve Cooke's call for ecologically attuned relationships between humans and other-than-humans, in which human knowledges are not deemed in principle superior to the knowledges of other-than-human entities and ethical goodness is not determined solely by human concerns and interests but has a partial independence of them. Nonetheless, like Vetlesen, she highlights the continued importance of ethically motivated human action, leading her to propose a reimagined, rearticulated conception of human freedom as ecologically attuned, self-directing, self-transforming agency. The proposed conception aims to break decisively with the ideal of the sovereign subject as it has emerged within capitalist modernity. Yann Allard-Tremblay makes a similar argument, urging us to recognize our embeddedness in the natural world while at the same time asserting our capacity for reflexive, responsible self-direction; he calls on us to seek concrete ways in which our relationships to one another and to other-than-humans can be renewed in their localized contexts. For Indigenous peoples, this process necessitates political resurgence and the revitalization of lifeways impacted by the destructive legacy of colonialism. In the case of non-Indigenous peoples, it may require far-reaching, transformations in relation to the land they live upon. John McGuire, too, holds onto the value of
{"title":"Editors’ introduction to the Special Section: The ethics and politics of the Anthropocene","authors":"Maeve Cooke, John McGuire","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12682","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8675.12682","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In recent years “the Anthropocene” has come to represent a new milestone for human-induced destruction of the environment. There is a widespread consensus that industrialization processes within capitalist modernity have ushered humanity into a new geological epoch bearing little resemblance to the climatic stability of “the Holocene,” the roughly 10,000-year span within which all known human civilizations were established. Furthermore, there is general agreement that the ending of climatic stability will have a devasting impact on the Earth's ecosystems, making long-term human settlement and global supply chains difficult, if not impossible, to maintain.</p><p>This Special Section aims to stimulate critical social theories to explore ways of thinking and acting that would equip us humans better to respond to the multiple challenges we face from the increasingly inescapable reach of ecological disaster. In all five contributions, “the Anthropocene” names a historical moment in which we must reconsider the very category of the human and our constitutive interdependencies with the other-than-human. Challenging the view that only humans possess intrinsic value, Arne Vetlesen calls on us to regard other-than-human beings as moral addressees in their own right. At the same time, he argues that only humans can be considered moral agents due to their powers of reflexivity, abstraction, imagination, and future oriented thinking. These powers make humans alone responsible for their actions. Although at first glance his asymmetric model may seem in tension with it, Vetlesen's argument resonates with Maeve Cooke's call for ecologically attuned relationships between humans and other-than-humans, in which human knowledges are not deemed in principle superior to the knowledges of other-than-human entities and ethical goodness is not determined solely by human concerns and interests but has a partial independence of them. Nonetheless, like Vetlesen, she highlights the continued importance of ethically motivated human action, leading her to propose a reimagined, rearticulated conception of human freedom as ecologically attuned, self-directing, self-transforming agency. The proposed conception aims to break decisively with the ideal of the sovereign subject as it has emerged within capitalist modernity. Yann Allard-Tremblay makes a similar argument, urging us to recognize our embeddedness in the natural world while at the same time asserting our capacity for reflexive, responsible self-direction; he calls on us to seek concrete ways in which our relationships to one another and to other-than-humans can be renewed in their localized contexts. For Indigenous peoples, this process necessitates political resurgence and the revitalization of lifeways impacted by the destructive legacy of colonialism. In the case of non-Indigenous peoples, it may require far-reaching, transformations in relation to the land they live upon. John McGuire, too, holds onto the value of","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"30 2","pages":"105-107"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8675.12682","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44934941","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
<p>For tens of thousands of years Paleolithic hunter-gatherer communities lived in democratic systems. These democratic communities based their relations on power and freedom on what Christopher Boehm has called “reverse dominance hierarchy” systems, which, for much of human history guaranteed political equality among members of hunter-gatherer communities. The reverse dominance hierarchy is a principle that could be used today to rethink the foundations of current democracies and design political systems that ensure true political equality in our societies. To understand democracy in the history of <i>Homo sapiens</i> and to evaluate current democratic systems, it is necessary to broaden the usual limited perspective on democracy. Robinson (<span>2010</span>) points out that modern humanism considers prehistory in rather negative terms and as largely irrelevant, yet prehistory covers most of <i>Homo sapiens</i>’ existence and has left deep evolutionary traces in modern humans.</p><p>Carroll (<span>2015</span>) proposes that power and dominance structures can be divided into four major periods: (a) dominance by an alpha male individual or group; (b) egalitarianism and democracy in hunter–gatherer societies; (c) the return to dominance by an individual or groups in postagricultural societies; and (d) the resurgence of democracy in today's modern democracies. Such a far-reaching historical perspective, while admittedly rather schematic and simplified, is important because it links modern democracies to a past that encompasses thousands of years of the existence of <i>Homo sapiens</i>. Sterelny (<span>2021a, 2021b</span>) offers a chronological perspective in affirming that, since our species was established around 300,000 years ago, 97% of its history has developed in egalitarian and democratic communities. This perspective should radically change the <i>Homo sapiens</i> vision of themselves, their past and present, and their possibilities for the future.</p><p>The image we have of democracy and of today's liberal democracies is influenced by our vision of the history of democracy. The currently dominant perspective is that today's liberal democracies are a democratic exception in the authoritarian history of humanity, and there is a tendency to be condescending in relation to liberal democracies and to generously excuse their shortcomings. However, a perspective that recognizes long periods of radical democracies in human history can be more critical. The democracies of the Palaeolithic demonstrate that democratic political systems cover most of human history, that humans have imagined and built democracies with a very high degree of political equality, and that democratic practices are closely linked to the evolutionary development of our species. For all these reasons, reevaluating the original democracies can have a significant impact on critical evaluation of the liberal democracies of today.</p><p>I explain forms of power in prehistoric democ
根据 "民主多样性（V-Dem）研究所"（Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute）的研究，除民选民主、自由民主、参与式民主和协商式民主外，平等民主也是制定不同国家民主指数时应考虑的民主类型之一（House & Gandhi, 2017; Sigman & Lindberg, 2015, 2019; Skaaning, 2021; Wolff, 2022）。民选民主、自由民主、参与式民主和协商民主的程序从根本上说都是公民政治参与的工具，具有一定程度的有效性和平等性。然而，平等主义民主不能被置于同一层面，因为平等主义应意味着政治平等的最大化：平等主义民主仅仅是民主。政治不平等是现有民主政体的巨大问题，大量实证研究表明，除了选票之外，对政府决策的影响力在人与人之间是非常不平等的，这取决于种族、文化、性别，尤其是社会经济资源（Bartels, 2009, 2018; Elsässer et al、2021；Gilen，2012；Gilens & Page，2014；Przeworski，2015，2019；Schäfer & Zürn，2021）。如果不能平等地获得资源、参与和公共影响力，即使是哈贝马斯和罗尔斯所捍卫的协商民主也是不可能的（Cohen，1997，1989，2018；Knight & Johnson，1997）。由于经济和教育资源的巨大差异，以及私人企业、国家和党派利益集团对媒体的控制等原因，我们的社会缺乏这种平等。社会经济不平等导致的政治不平等是自由民主的盲点（Wolff，2022）。由于过去四十年新自由主义资本主义、新自由主义国家寡头政治和技术官僚的霸权，以及当前新自由主义共识的危机，自由民主已经失去了合法性（Kalyvas，2019）。多位作者（Crouch, 2004; Mouffe, 2005; Ranciere, 1995）提到了后民主和类似的说法，以解释自20世纪70年代以来，随着新自由主义的出现和霸权的不断扩大，民主已经退化，不能再被视为民主--充其量，政权是自由的，但不是民主的。事实上，在与资本主义相联系的现代自由民主国家中，一直存在着政治不平等的紧张关系。自英国、美国和法国革命以来，自由宪政体制下的资产阶级精英一直限制选举权，也就是说，将限制选举权合法化的自由主义思想家并非真正的民主主义者（Macpherson, 2003, 2005）。当我们质疑民主作为政治权力和自由的平等在多大程度上与其他非政治社会领域的不平等相容时，一个超越性的问题就出现了。资本主义作为一种经济制度，在其最极端的形式下，会产生社会经济不平等，从而产生巨大的政治不平等（Albertson & Whittle, 2021; García-Olivares, 2014; Houle, 2018; Levin-Waldman, 2020; Lindberg, 2019; Mahmutefendic, 2021; Milner, 2021; Schäfer，2012）。罗尔斯（1971 年）的差异原则为经济不平等提供了正当理由，前提是经济不平等有利于社会中最不利的群体。然而，即使如罗尔斯所呼吁的那样，保留了基本自由和获得权力职位的平等机会，但经济上的更大不平等必然意味着政治上的更大不平等，从而减少民主，因为特权阶层将直接凌驾于弱势阶层之上。正如上文所解释的，反向支配是通过各种手段实施的，但这并不意味着现代社会也需要实施同样的程序。政治平等需要相关的条件，这不仅体现在政治体制和程序方面，而且主要体现在社会的政治文化方面。在最初的民主政体中，社会抵消了个人或团体增加权力和获取政治支配地位的任何企图。个人拥有自由，但为了所有人的利益，这些自由受到限制，因为任何人都不能获得经济、宗教、军事等方面的影响力和决策能力，这意味着政治权力和政治影响力优于社会其他成员。今天的自由民主国家并没有考虑到这种对自由的限制。 原始民主政体的本质区别不在于其程序方面（集会、协商决策、无权领导等），而在于其本质：原始民主政体是极端平等主义的，其根本原因在于成员之间政治权力和自由的平等分配。然而，从绝对意义上讲，妇女在旧石器时代文化中的作用仍然是个问题。如果女性拥有与男性相同的权力和自由，那么这些民主国家就是完全民主的；如果不存在性别平等，那么这些国家就是部分民主的，我们只能以男性之间的政治平等作为参照，并将其推广到所有成年人。如果在一些旧石器时代的社区，而不是其他社区，所有成年人都拥有权力和自由，那么，同样，我们也只能将那些性别平等的社区作为参照。原始民主政体的根本问题是政治平等原则：任何人都不能获得社会、经济、文化、军事等方面的权力，从而导致社区内部的统治和政治不平等。从我们社会的政治和文化角度来看，这一点非常重要，因为政治平等作为民主的基本价值被视为乌托邦。Dubrow（2014 年）认为，虽然当前所有民主国家都存在政治不平等，但没有证据表明政治平等曾经存在过。因此，考虑原始的旧石器时代民主政体可能是有意义的，因为那里可能存在政治平等。从君主制到寡头制再到民主制的过渡，即让更多的社区成员参与决策，意味着一定程度的政治平等主义，因为民主意味着由所有人，或至少由多数人治理政府，这在某种程度上使社区成员平等。在民选民主政体、代议制民主政体和自由民主政体中，政治平等是有限的，但政治平等是其合法性的论据。民选民主政体倾向于实施熊彼特的最小民主原则，因为公民平等地投票选举政治精英。合法性的论据是，所有公民都有权投出等值的不记名投票。自由民主国家的公民在基本自由（思想、言论、集会等）和法律面前也是平等的。公民之间的权力和自由越平等，民主程度就越高。从激进民主的角度来看，当权力和自由分配不均时，就不存在真正的民主，而是一种介于民主和寡头政治之间的混合形式。因此，要评估一个社会的民主水平，必须同时确定公民享有政治参与权的比例和公民之间政治平等的程度。各种程序都要遵守这一基本原则，因此，.....：(a) 社区成为一个联盟，嘲笑、罢黜、驱逐或处决那些声称拥有更多政治权力和想要支配他人的人；(b) 在集会上以协商一致的方式做出决定，因此没有人被排除在外；(d) 领导人没有权力或能力进行胁迫，以确保他们不会比其他人拥有更多的权力或限制其他人的自由。然而，这些程序不能被视为非支配制度的应用，而是反向支配制度的应用：是社区作为一个联盟，通过行使权力和胁迫，保证其成员之间政治权力和政治自由的平等。在现代政治理论中出现了关于平等主义民主的提法：所有公民享有平等的政治权力、相同的自由、相同的参政权利和确定议程的权利，最重要的是，对影响社区的决策具有相同的影响力。达尔（1971 年、1989 年、2006 年、2007 年）的民主概念（与多政体相对）提到了平等主义民主的条件：权力资源以及所有工具和关系的均衡分配，从而对决策产生平等的影响。其他作者也讨论过政治平等和平等主义民主，包括 Dubrow (2015)、Näsström (2017)、Rueschemeyer (2004) 和 Post (2006)。
{"title":"Democracy against Homo sapiens alpha: Reverse dominance and political equality in human history","authors":"F. Xavier Ruiz Collantes","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12680","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8675.12680","url":null,"abstract":"<p>For tens of thousands of years Paleolithic hunter-gatherer communities lived in democratic systems. These democratic communities based their relations on power and freedom on what Christopher Boehm has called “reverse dominance hierarchy” systems, which, for much of human history guaranteed political equality among members of hunter-gatherer communities. The reverse dominance hierarchy is a principle that could be used today to rethink the foundations of current democracies and design political systems that ensure true political equality in our societies. To understand democracy in the history of <i>Homo sapiens</i> and to evaluate current democratic systems, it is necessary to broaden the usual limited perspective on democracy. Robinson (<span>2010</span>) points out that modern humanism considers prehistory in rather negative terms and as largely irrelevant, yet prehistory covers most of <i>Homo sapiens</i>’ existence and has left deep evolutionary traces in modern humans.</p><p>Carroll (<span>2015</span>) proposes that power and dominance structures can be divided into four major periods: (a) dominance by an alpha male individual or group; (b) egalitarianism and democracy in hunter–gatherer societies; (c) the return to dominance by an individual or groups in postagricultural societies; and (d) the resurgence of democracy in today's modern democracies. Such a far-reaching historical perspective, while admittedly rather schematic and simplified, is important because it links modern democracies to a past that encompasses thousands of years of the existence of <i>Homo sapiens</i>. Sterelny (<span>2021a, 2021b</span>) offers a chronological perspective in affirming that, since our species was established around 300,000 years ago, 97% of its history has developed in egalitarian and democratic communities. This perspective should radically change the <i>Homo sapiens</i> vision of themselves, their past and present, and their possibilities for the future.</p><p>The image we have of democracy and of today's liberal democracies is influenced by our vision of the history of democracy. The currently dominant perspective is that today's liberal democracies are a democratic exception in the authoritarian history of humanity, and there is a tendency to be condescending in relation to liberal democracies and to generously excuse their shortcomings. However, a perspective that recognizes long periods of radical democracies in human history can be more critical. The democracies of the Palaeolithic demonstrate that democratic political systems cover most of human history, that humans have imagined and built democracies with a very high degree of political equality, and that democratic practices are closely linked to the evolutionary development of our species. For all these reasons, reevaluating the original democracies can have a significant impact on critical evaluation of the liberal democracies of today.</p><p>I explain forms of power in prehistoric democ","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"31 2","pages":"233-252"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8675.12680","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49545787","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Self-transformation in the Anthropocene","authors":"Karim Sadek","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12684","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8675.12684","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"30 2","pages":"141-152"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49024902","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ethics in the Anthropocene: The case for questioning anthropocentrism","authors":"Arne Johan Vetlesen","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12685","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8675.12685","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"30 2","pages":"153-161"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44336416","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
<p>Conspiracy theory has lately come under greater scrutiny in countries around the world, with several conspiracy theories having gained infamy for encouraging dangerous behaviors and attitudes among their followers: QAnon in the United States (see Coaston, <span>2020</span>); claims that COVID-19 was brought to China by Americans (see Chunshan, <span>2020</span>); and the broader international anti-vaccination movement (see DiRusso & Stansberry, <span>2022</span>; Sturm & Albrecht, <span>2021</span>), to name just a few of the most prominent. These and other conspiracy theories have contributed to undermining trust in political institutions and have even played a role in motivating political violence, as exemplified by events such as Donald Trump's claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election and the subsequent Capitol Building riot of January 6, 2021 (see Argentino, <span>2021</span>; Bessner & Frost, <span>2021</span>); the arrest in late 2022 of members of the <i>Reichsbürger</i> movement, a monarchist group associated with Holocaust revisionism and anti-Semitic conspiracism more broadly, for their involvement in a plan to overthrow the Federal Republic in Germany (see Burchett, <span>2022</span>; Hill, <span>2022</span>); and the storming of the Brazilian Congress by supporters of the former president Jair Bolsonaro, on the pretext that his 2022 election defeat was also fraudulent (see Nicas, <span>2023</span>).</p><p>Despite the plainly political aspects of such conspiracy theories—both in terms of the content of their claims and their implications—when conspiracy theory is conceptualized or defined, politics has too often been overlooked. Conspiracy theory has often been conceptualized primarily through the lens of epistemology, seen as a particular sort of truth claim, though precise definitions and assessments of this type of claim vary (e.g., see Buenting & Taylor, <span>2010</span>; Cassam, <span>2019</span>; Clarke, <span>2002</span>; Coady, <span>2007</span>; Dentith, <span>2018</span>; Keeley, <span>1999</span>; Pigden, <span>2007</span>; Sunstein & Vermeule, <span>2009</span>). This epistemological framing is not constrained to philosophical discussions on conspiracy theory, being also present in research by political scientists on conspiracy theory. For example, in their study of how governments could respond to conspiracy theories, Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule (<span>2009</span>) argue that belief in harmful and false conspiracy theories is the product of what they term as a “crippled epistemology.” Similarly, while their broader argument is that conspiracy theories are more likely to be endorsed by political losers, Uscinski and Parent (<span>2014</span>, Chapter 2) also conceptualize conspiracy theory chiefly through the lens of epistemology; the political aspects of conspiracy theory are largely omitted from their conceptualization, and instead they focus on the standards that could be used to ju
{"title":"A critical conceptualization of conspiracy theory","authors":"Adam John Koper","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12683","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8675.12683","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Conspiracy theory has lately come under greater scrutiny in countries around the world, with several conspiracy theories having gained infamy for encouraging dangerous behaviors and attitudes among their followers: QAnon in the United States (see Coaston, <span>2020</span>); claims that COVID-19 was brought to China by Americans (see Chunshan, <span>2020</span>); and the broader international anti-vaccination movement (see DiRusso & Stansberry, <span>2022</span>; Sturm & Albrecht, <span>2021</span>), to name just a few of the most prominent. These and other conspiracy theories have contributed to undermining trust in political institutions and have even played a role in motivating political violence, as exemplified by events such as Donald Trump's claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election and the subsequent Capitol Building riot of January 6, 2021 (see Argentino, <span>2021</span>; Bessner & Frost, <span>2021</span>); the arrest in late 2022 of members of the <i>Reichsbürger</i> movement, a monarchist group associated with Holocaust revisionism and anti-Semitic conspiracism more broadly, for their involvement in a plan to overthrow the Federal Republic in Germany (see Burchett, <span>2022</span>; Hill, <span>2022</span>); and the storming of the Brazilian Congress by supporters of the former president Jair Bolsonaro, on the pretext that his 2022 election defeat was also fraudulent (see Nicas, <span>2023</span>).</p><p>Despite the plainly political aspects of such conspiracy theories—both in terms of the content of their claims and their implications—when conspiracy theory is conceptualized or defined, politics has too often been overlooked. Conspiracy theory has often been conceptualized primarily through the lens of epistemology, seen as a particular sort of truth claim, though precise definitions and assessments of this type of claim vary (e.g., see Buenting & Taylor, <span>2010</span>; Cassam, <span>2019</span>; Clarke, <span>2002</span>; Coady, <span>2007</span>; Dentith, <span>2018</span>; Keeley, <span>1999</span>; Pigden, <span>2007</span>; Sunstein & Vermeule, <span>2009</span>). This epistemological framing is not constrained to philosophical discussions on conspiracy theory, being also present in research by political scientists on conspiracy theory. For example, in their study of how governments could respond to conspiracy theories, Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule (<span>2009</span>) argue that belief in harmful and false conspiracy theories is the product of what they term as a “crippled epistemology.” Similarly, while their broader argument is that conspiracy theories are more likely to be endorsed by political losers, Uscinski and Parent (<span>2014</span>, Chapter 2) also conceptualize conspiracy theory chiefly through the lens of epistemology; the political aspects of conspiracy theory are largely omitted from their conceptualization, and instead they focus on the standards that could be used to ju","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"31 2","pages":"218-232"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8675.12683","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41781060","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Technocracy as a thin ideology","authors":"Stefan Rummens","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12676","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8675.12676","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"31 2","pages":"174-188"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44572292","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Finance capital and the perils of political disintegration: The crisis of Weimar democracy revisited","authors":"Kyong-Min Son","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12672","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8675.12672","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"31 2","pages":"204-217"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44016075","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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