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Paper short abstract

Drawing on ethnographic research with Anthroposophists in Stuttgart, this paper disentangles science skepticism from conspiracy theory. It shows how vaccine hesitancy is articulated through secular idioms of care, authority, and state power within an explicitly spiritual milieu.

Paper long abstract

Especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many theories circulated in the public sphere around the world concerning the origins of the virus, and the “real” function of masks and mRNA vaccines. In mainstream discussions, the label “conspiracy theorist” became a sweeping analytic used to describe a wide range of positions, from vaccine hesitancy grounded in diverse concerns to claims that Bill Gates was attempting to implant chips into human bodies to control humanity. In this environment, critiques of science became easy to come by. Based on my field research with Anthroposophists in Stuttgart, a spiritual movement that emerged in German-speaking Europe in the early twentieth century, I examine how science skepticism is articulated outside conspiratorial frameworks. As it is usually covered in the German media, the Anthroposophists I spoke with rarely explained their vaccine hesitancy in spiritual terms. While Anthroposophists do understand disease as an opportunity for karmic lessons, and vaccines as potentially interfering with these processes, they often articulated “secular” reasons when asked about their hesitancy, from reluctance to introduce “unnatural” substances into their bodies to opposition to state vaccination mandates, which they interpreted as authoritarian. In this talk, I argue that while science skepticism and conspiratorial thinking may overlap, as they often do, they are not analytically the same. Disentangling these positions allows us to better understand why science so readily becomes an object of critique, particularly in relation to how scientists articulate science in the public sphere and how scientific authority is mediated and moralized.