Bullshit and Post-truth Politics

The study of bullshit has become a growing area of scholarly enquiry in political science, management, sociology and philosophy. This event discusses how bullshit has taken over the worlds of business and increasingly the political arena.

The spread of management-speak from business the public sector organisations into politics has been a feature of recent years. This vacuous jargon can be easily laughed off, but is there a real cost to talking rubbish? André Spicer will present his book on Business Bullshit, and will be joined by Matthew d’Ancona, Tanya Filer and Juliane Reinecke who will argue that politics is equally subject to the descent into bullshit, with potentially disastrous consequences for our democracy. Jonathan Hopkin will chair the discussion.

Matthew d’Ancona (@MatthewdAncona) is a British journalist who writes a weekly column for the Guardian and was previously editor of the Spectator

Tanya Filer (@TanyaFiler) is a Research Associate on the Leverhulme-funded Conspiracy and Democracy Project based at CRASSH (Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities)

Juliane Reinecke joined King’s Business School in 2017 as Professor of International Management & Sustainability and Associate Dean (Impact & Innovation). 

André Spicer (@andre_spicer)is Professor of Organisational Behaviour and the founding director of ETHOS: The Centre for Responsible Enterprise at Cass Business School

Jonathan Hopkin (@jrhopkin) is Associate Professor of Comparative Politics, Department of Government, LSE and author of Party Formation and Democratic Transition in Spain as well as numerous journal articles on democratic institutions and political economy in Europe.

The Department of Government (@LSEGovernment) at LSE is one of the largest political science departments in the UK. Our activities cover a comprehensive range of approaches to the study of politics.