Risk, Return to Industry, and the Future of Democracy
Abstract
Reflecting on 2020, I argue that the United States has failed, both as a representative democratic republic and as a state. Drawing on social behaviorism of Mead and the pragmatist tradition, this failure has been cultivated by widespread, institutionalized mistrust, expressed in and exacerbated by conspiratorial thinking. I argue, drawing on Mannheim and Adorno, as well as social movements scholarship, that such thinking is interest-bound, weaponizing mistrust, and is broadly psychologically appealing but ultimately disempowering, serving the ends of hasty praxis, failed activism, ruling-class ideology, and false consciousness. I examine two possible sources of institutionalized mistrust: the "culture wars" thesis which argues that mistrust is iteratively linked to polarization along religious, racial, and cultural lines, and Ulrich Beck's vision of a "return to industry" in which responses to novel hazards are constrained by techno-economic imperatives that further politicize knowledge and splinter class loyalties. I emphasize the second explanation without discounting the first, arguing that this approach to hazards, from COVID to institutional discrimination to climate change, is both unsustainable and self-thwarting in terms of rebuilding social trust. Then, drawing on Beck as well as scholars from the U.S. pragmatist tradition, I offer possible future visions, including but not limited to avenues toward restoration of social trust the United States, based on this analysis.
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