key: cord-0738107-rn81ffh8
authors: Kaptan, Senem
title: Corona conspiracies: a call for urgent anthropological attention
date: 2020-05-18
journal: Soc Anthropol
DOI: 10.1111/1469-8676.12841
sha: ccb691f79254136bfe7f3c20a2840cc1ee256a4b
doc_id: 738107
cord_uid: rn81ffh8

nan

I insist on calling these speculations narratives of conspiracy (instead of the more anthropologically preferred terms rumour or gossip) not to pathologise them as 'irrational' musings. Rather, I suggest that we go back to the roots of the verb to conspire, 1 which literally means to breathe together, and reflect on the power of the collective breath that produces the above speculations to shape the way we interact with the world and people around us. In Turkey, conspiracy narratives about coronavirus do not live on the fringes of society. They circulate daily through WhatsApp messages, accompanied by videos and commentaries; they are exchanged between shoppers during grocery runs; they pepper the speeches of major political figures addressing the nation; and they take centre stage on newspaper headlines prepared for public consumption. They breathe life into our collective existence. They are as political as they are personal.

There has been much public debate that COVID-19, with its disruption of our work patterns, consumption habits and social interactions, has led to the end of the world as we know it. Yet, with the circulation of conspiracy narratives about this unfamiliar new normal, the way people acquire and exchange information about the pandemic has been alarmingly familiar. If the virus will be the impetus for constructing a different world order, who will get to narrate our new future? As an important intervention in this public debate, a plethora of calls have been made about the dangers of using war as an analogy to describe our efforts to address a public health issue. Coupled with the widespread embrace of this analogy, simplified narratives about the origins and spread of the virus have already led to nationalist, militarised, racist and xenophobic responses to it.

On the other hand, anthropologists were quick to respond to the collective upending of our lives with calls to chronicle days during, and to ethnographically examine, one of the most unprecedented public health emergencies of our times. I would like to expand this call by urging us to not merely think about, but also to make much-needed interventions in, the public narratives that assertively and authoritatively try to determine how we interact with a crisis and, hence, our collective future. Our current state not only demands, but, more importantly, deserves a more complex social and political reaction than what we have witnessed so far.

senemkaptan@gmail.com

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