Playing cards against the state: Precarious lives, conspiracy theories, and the production of ‘irrational’ subjects

Abstract

This paper discusses the role of conspiracy theory in political speech amongst service users at a soup kitchen in Brixton, south London. Rather than categorizing conspiracy theories as ‘irrational’ it argues that this speech must be read in the context of precarity and an oppositional relationship with the state. In particular the paper argues that ‘behaviour change theory’, which has become a key influence in British social policy, works on the basis that those at the margins of society are not fully capable of making the right decisions for themselves. Behaviour change theory, which has become influential around the world, excludes the most marginal aspects of society from political discourse by assuming they are ‘irrational’. In this way the very ontological security (Giddens, 1991; Laing, 2010; Philo, 2014) of individuals on the margins of society is threatened by policies which aim to govern behaviour and territorialize precarious lives. This paper will argue that conspiracy theories, where deployed by marginalized people, are strategies which attempt to act across multiple political scales. From the socially marginal space of the soup kitchen, conspiracy theories claim knowledge of larger scale political geographies. This paper demonstrates that an ethnographic method is instrumental in exploring this multi-scalar complexity.