Science and Anthropology in a Post-Truth World

In this book, H. Sidky examines how a cadre of American academics influenced by French postmodern philosophy during the 1980’s and 1990’s informed and empowered the assault on science and truth by corporate organizations, post-truth politicians, religious extremists, and right-wing populists in the present post-truth era.

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At the end of 2019, Americans were living in an era of post-truth characterized by fake news, weaponized lies, alternative facts, conspiracy theories, magical thinking, and irrationalism. Science and scientific knowledge were under attack. While many complex interconnected factors were at work, post-truth in the United States was partly the culmination of a cadre of anthropologists and other academics in American universities and colleges during the 1980’s and 1990’s. In Science and Anthropology in a Post-Truth World, H. Sidky examines how their untoward dalliance with problematic and dangerous ideas by Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard, Bruno Latour, and Jean Baudrillard informed and empowered a forceful assault on science and truth in the following decades by corporate organizations, politicians, religious extremists, and right-wing populists.