Natural Freedom: Counter-Narratives in Contemporary Britain

Context The proposed research will address counter-narratives through understanding the everyday ethical and spiritual bases of challenges to health (e.g. COVID-19), climate change, and urban planning (e.g. 15 minute cities) policies. To do this I shall use a mixed methods approach that will advance the ESRC priority to understand politics and governance in the UK. Bringing together critical approaches in anthropology and religious studies, I frame everyday conspiracy theories as counter-narratives and investigate the ethical and spiritual reasoning underlying seemingly irrational claims. In doing so, counter-narratives will be approached as both political and spiritual, as opposed to existing research that largely separates these domains. The growth of far-right discourse in wellness and spiritual communities has been met with surprise because of the assumed left-wing politics of these communities and their worldviews. This approach allows for an examination of how counter-narratives often challenge generalizations as either ‘right’ or ‘left’ wing and in the process undermine social cohesion. Challenge Counter-narratives about health, climate, and urban planning proliferate online and in person. Understanding the ethical and spiritual reasoning behind counter-narratives is necessary to learn how social polarization is formed, erodes trust in governance, and disrupts interpersonal relationships. Public health, climate adaptation, and urban planning policies will be less effective if people interpret experts in bad faith and reject the premises of scientific principles. Governance depends on some level of trust in medical, scientific, and political authorities to be effective, indicating the substantial challenge of counter-narratives that erode trust. Spirituality and politics overlap in poorly understood ways in wellness and new age spirituality making this a significant yet understudied context for counter-narratives. Objectives The objective is to study how counter-narratives drive political polarization in wellness and spiritual communities and undermine social cohesion. To address these challenges, the proposed research aims to: [1] advance the fields of anthropology and computational sociology through theorizing counter-narratives in British offline and online life using a mixed methods approach integrating ethnographic and computational text analysis. To do this, I will undertake participant observation ethnography and interviews in the town of Glastonbury, UK, and computational text analysis of online content to investigate how counter-narratives are spread online and offline. [2] Focusing on the social context over the specific content of counter-narratives, this project aims to extend anthropological analyses of social communication with work in religious studies on meta-empirical beliefs to theoretically reframe conspiracy theories as counter-narratives that broach social and epistemological gaps between experts and lay publics. [3] Impact policy on counter-narratives at both local and central government levels. Potential Applications The potential beneficiaries of this research are [1] academic researchers who study polarization and radicalization in the fields of politics, health, climate, and social science. [2] The local community through empowering them to reflect on polarization. Ongoing community consultation events will create a feedback loop between project, study community, and project partners to learn from and help communities reduce polarization and increase social cohesion. [3] Central government and policymakers who are concerned with the effects of eroding social trust on policy implementation such as in vaccine uptake, climate adaption, and traffic management. [4] Community organizations concerned with far-right infiltration and the effect this has on social cohesion and interpersonal relationships. Through these applications this research will advance the UKRI strategic theme to build a secure and resilient world.