"Ideological Propaganda and Disempowered Groups: Explaining the Passivity of Oppressed Populations" by Professor Joseph Shieber

Date: Thursday, November 30

Time: 4:30-5:45 PM

Location: Oechsle Hall 224

When they consider the inaction of disempowered groups to rectify structural power imbalances in society, theorists are often puzzled. Why, if there are such imbalances, don't larger numbers of people within those disempowered groups agitate for social change? In his 2015 book, How Propaganda Works, Jason Stanley offers one answer, based on his own research in epistemology: people from such groups don't mobilize for action because they lack the knowledge that would motivate and inform such action. In this talk Professor Shieber criticizes Stanley on two grounds: (1) the claim that people from disempowered groups lack knowledge of the structural power imbalances that oppress them is false (indeed, almost patronizingly so) and (2) Stanley's work in epistemology wouldn't explain a lack of knowledge, even if we were to grant that people from such groups did lack knowledge. Prof. Shieber will then suggest a number of alternative, mutually reinforcing, explanations that better account for the lack of greater mobilization for action among members of disempowered groups.