Towards a Socioanthropology of Conveniences

This paper is a ‘launch’ of a field of studies, the Socioanthropology of Conveniences. The paper is the result of a collective analysis drawn up by the Grupo de Antropologia das Conveniências. We start from the premise that it is insufficient to analyse the events that are considered to drive ‘conspiracy theories’ as just “fake news”. We think about the central role that the ‘conveniences’ that these events produce and occupy in the lives of human beings. Thus, looking at the implications and unfolding of the ‘conveniences’ of disseminating a narrative allows us to intersect with approaches to discourses, epistemologies and cosmologies in order to try to understand the processes and praxis of individuals and groups. In this sense, the GAC members have drawn up ‘inconvenient notes’ on events and categories. The first annotation addresses one of the most incomprehensible, yet effective and paradoxical, sets of fakenews in contemporary Brazil which is the event-movement of a large number of ‘scientists’ who seek to obstruct the legalisation of not only the use, but also the therapy and, incredibly, the research with cannabis plants. The second analyses the implications of the apocryphal video circulating on social media, ‘A Facada no Mito’, which claims that a stab wound allegedly inflicted on a candidate for the presidency of the Republic of Brazil in 2018 was a simulation of an electoral campaign. And the third concludes with the relevance of approaching the so-called ‘post-truth era’ and ‘conveniences’ in contemporary life from the point of view of the formulation of what we call a ‘transcience’, the Socioanthropology of Conveniences’. In sum, analysing conveniences is fundamental to understanding how the fruition, macro and micro politics of social relations are formulated and take place in contemporary society.