Publications
The researchers doing the subprojects will be writing monographs, a selection of the papers delivered at the three big conferences will be published in edited volumes, and the PI and the postdoc researcher will write a number of articles for peer-reviewed journals. All publications will be open access.
Michael Butter | Article
Verschwörungstheorien: Eine Synopse
BPJM Aktuell, Bundeszentrale für Kinder- und Jugendmedienschutz (BzKJ).
show moreMichael Butter | Article
The Power of Conspiracy
Reset Europe: Time for Culture to Give Europe New Momentum?, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e.V. (ifa).
show moreMichael Butter | Article
Von Hinterzimmern und geheimen Machenschaften. Verschwörungstheorien in Geschichte und Gegenwart
Im Dialog – Beiträge aus der Akademie der Diözese Rottenburg-Stuttgart
show moreMichael Butter | Article
Impfen hilft: Wann Verschwörungstheorien gefährlich sind und was man gegen sie tun kann
Nie wegsehen: Vom Mut, menschlich zu bleiben, Dietz.
show moreMichael Butter | Article
Verschwörungstheorien: Zehn Erkenntnisse aus der Pandemie
Jenseits von Corona: Unsere Welt nach der Pandemie, transcript.
show moreMichael Butter | Online Article
Antisemitische Verschwörungstheorien in Geschichte und Gegenwart
Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (bpb)
show moreMichael Butter | Essay
Linke und rechte Verschwörungsgläubige: Die neue Querfront
Spiegel Politik
show moreMichael Butter | Article
Why Do We Believe in Conspiracy Theories?
Cicero Foundation Great Debate Paper
show moreMichael Butter | Article
Verschwörungstheorien: Eine Einführung
Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte (APuZ), Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung.
show moreKaterina Hatzikidi | Review
Review: Religious Imaginations and Global Transitions: How Narratives of Faith are Shaping Today’s World
Reading Religion
show moreKaterina Hatzikidi | Article
The Worst Is Not over Yet: The Lives and Deaths of the ‘Self’ and ‘Others’ in Brazil’s Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic
Bulletin of Latin American Research
show moreKaterina Hatzikidi | Article
Bolsonaro y el mito del presidente «antiestablishment»
Nueva Sociedad
show moreKaterina Hatzikidi | Article
The tamed and the untameable: How the establishment is serving Bolsonaro’s authoritarianism
Open Democracy
show moreKaterina Hatzikidi | Article
Dois anos após a eleição de Bolsonaro: o Brasil em perpétua campanha eleitoral
Open Democracy
show moreKaterina Hatzikidi | Review
Review: Kapferer, Bruce and Dimitrios Theodossopoulos (eds.) 2019. Democracy’s paradox: populism and its contemporary crisis.
Social Anthropology
show moreKaterina Hatzikidi | Article
Introduction to: A Meteoric Rise to Power? Ethnographic Insights on Brazil’s Conservative Turn
Bulletin of Latin American Research
show moreKaterina Hatzikidi | Article
Existe uma ‘terceira via’ para o Brasil?
Open Democracy
show moreKaterina Hatzikidi | Article
Populism’s ambiguity: Reflecting on bolsonarism
Brazilian Research and Studies Center Blog
show moreKaterina Hatzikidi | Book Review
Sá Motta, Rodrigo Patto. On guard against the red menace: Anti-communism in Brazil, 1917-1964
Brasiliana: Journal for Brazilian Studies
show moreKaterina Hatzikidi | Book Review
Pierre Ostiguy, Francisco Panizza and Benjamin Moffitt (Eds.). Populism in Global Perspective: A Performative and Discursive Approach
Journal of Latin American Studies
show moreKaterina Hatzikidi | Article
Covid conspiracies in Brazil: The old communist spectre revisited
Culturico
show moreConstanze Jeitler | Article
Rechtspopulisten und der Umweltschutz: Mit Hausverstand und Verschwörungstheorien die Welt retten
Der Standard
show moreConstanze Jeitler | Article
Mainstreaming Extremism or Radicalizing the Center: How the Querdenker Movement Challenges the Democratic Order
American Institute for Contemporary German Studies
show more
A Horizon of (Im)possibilities: A Chronicle of Brazil’s Conservative Turn
Edited By Katerina Hatzikidi, Eduardo Dullo
The 2018 presidential election result in Brazil surprised and shocked many. Since then, numerous debates and a growing body of texts have attempted to understand the country’s so-called ‘conservative turn’.
A gripping in-depth account of politics and society in Brazil today, this new volume brings together a myriad of different perspectives to help us better understand the political events that shook the country in recent years. Combining ethnographic insights with political science, history, sociology, and anthropology, the interdisciplinary analyses included offer a panoramic view on social and political change in Brazil, spanning temporal and spatial dimensions. Starting with the 2018 presidential election, the contributors discuss the country’s recent –or more distant– past in relation to the present. Pointing to the continuities and disruptions in the course of those years, the analyses offered are an invaluable guide to unpacking and understanding the limits of Brazilian democracy, including what has already come to pass, but also what is yet to come.
The Nature of Conspiracy Theories
Michael Butter
Translated by Sharon Howe
Conspiracy theories seem to be proliferating today. Long relegated to a niche existence, conspiracy theories are now pervasive, and older conspiracy theories have been joined by a constant stream of new ones – that the USA carried out the 9/11 attacks itself, that the Ukrainian crisis was orchestrated by NATO, that we are being secretly controlled by a New World Order that keep us docile via chemtrails and vaccinations. Not to mention the moon landing that never happened.
But what are conspiracy theories and why do people believe them? Have they always existed or are they something new, a feature of our modern world?
In this book Michael Butter provides a clear and comprehensive introduction to the nature and development of conspiracy theories. Contrary to popular belief, he shows that conspiracy theories are less popular and influential today than they were in the past. Up to the 1950s, the Western world regarded conspiracy theories as a legitimate form of knowledge and it was therefore normal to believe in them. It was only after the Second World War that this knowledge was delegitimized, causing conspiracy theories to be banished from public discourse and relegated to subcultures. The recent renaissance of conspiracy theories is linked to internet which gives them wider exposure and contributes to the fragmentation of the public sphere. Conspiracy theories are still stigmatized today in many sections of mainstream culture but are being accepted once again as legitimate knowledge in others. It is the clash between these domains and their different conceptions of truth that is fuelling the current debate over conspiracy theories.