44. sociologický večer
The dust of rumours … a sociological account
host: Prof. John Holmwood (University of Nottingham, UK)
In Birmingham, UK, in 2005, a broadcast by a local community radio station alleged that a young African-Caribbean girl had been sexually assaulted by a group of South Asian boys at the back of a beauty parlour. In the ensuing riots, two people were killed. The alleged victim was never found (see). In 2007-08, e-mails circulated in the USA alleging that President Obama was not born in the USA and that he was brought up a Muslim and was hiding a radical Islamic background. The number of Americans believing these allegations rose in the same period from 8% to 13%. (see).
Drawing on C. Wright Mills’s arguments about ‘public anxieties’ and ‘private troubles’, I will discuss two examples to consider how rumours arise, are stabilised and then given credence by the nature of wider public engagement with them. The two cases are: the phenomenon of alien abduction in the USA, and allegations of abduction of non-Muslim young women and their enforced marriages to Muslim men (‘from Kaur to Kahn’) in the UK. The talk will conclude with a brief discussion of the elements in common with the other two cases and reflections on rumour in the internet age and how ‘the dust of rumours’ (Dylan) can cover everything.
úterý 9. listopadu 2010 od 18:30
v budově Hollar, místnost číslo 112
