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Please join us for this Research Seminar with prof. Linsey McGoey (Essex University) on Wednesday 11 February, 15:00 - 17:00.

Linsey's talk will draw on qualitative research carried out in different Anglosphere nations to explore the politics of polarization.

The seminar is co-hosted by the Department of Sociology and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies organised by the Technology, Economy and Society research cluster.

Title: Yellowstone, East Palestine

Speaker: Professor Linsey McGoey

Location: S0.10

Abstract:
In a small town in rural Ohio called East Palestine, there’s a single bar. In this bar, you’ll often find reruns of Yellowstone playing on TV screens, signifying a type of rural resonance and pride at a time of deepening political polarization. Drawing on repeat field visits to East Palestine over a three-year period, together with interviews carried out in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, New York, Montana and Florida, this talk presents early findings from a long-term qualitative study of American attitudes today. I explore the role of new and old technologies in fuelling different political attitudes during an era of widespread economic immiseration. I develop concepts such as ‘oracular power’ and ‘phantomwealth’ to theorize this interview data. I also explore cornerstone terms used in the past to understand political discord and economic injustice, include the phrases ‘white ignorance’ and ‘racial capitalism’ and their limitations.
 
Biography:
Linsey McGoey is professor of sociology at the University of Essex. She works across social theory, economic sociology and the epistemology of knowledge and ignorance. Books include No Such Thing as a Free Gift (Verso) and The Unknowers: How Strategic Ignorance Rules the World (Bloomsbury). Her next book, Judgment Machines: Oracular Power and the Making of Truth, is under contract with University of Toronto Press