New Books Network: Interview with Elizabeth Anne Davis — "The Time of the Cannibals: On Conspiracy Theory and Context" (Fordham UP, 2024)

Date: November 25, 2025
Host: Yadong Li
Guest: Elizabeth Anne Davis

Episode Overview

This episode features Professor Elizabeth Anne Davis, anthropologist at Princeton and author of The Time of the Cannibals: On Conspiracy Theory and Context. The conversation explores the complexities of conspiracy theory as a social, political, and epistemological phenomenon, drawing primarily from Davis’s long-term ethnographic work in Cyprus. The discussion dives into the challenges of theorizing conspiracy theories, the nuances of ethnographic contexts, the recursive nature of conspiratorial thinking, and Davis’s proposal for a new vocabulary to study suspicion—specifically, her concept of “conspiracy attunement.”

Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. Elizabeth Davis’s Intellectual Journey

• Interest in Thinking and Knowing: Davis describes a career-long fascination with how people make sense of their worlds—not just what they know, but how, and the limits of that knowledge (03:43).
• Past Projects:
  • Bad Souls (mental health/psychiatry in Greece)
  • Artifactual (forensics/documentary/media in Cyprus)
  • Both projects orbit questions of epistemology: “ways of knowing about historical experiences that actually elude consciousness in one way or another.” (07:00)
• Transition to Cyprus: Her work transitioned from Greece (specifically, the militarized Greek-Turkish border) to Cyprus due to recurring references to Cyprus’s division in Greek border communities (08:32).

2. How Cyprus Became Central to the Study of Conspiracy Theory

• Encountering Meta-Discourse: As an American in Cyprus, Davis is immediately implicated in local conspiracy narratives that blame the US and UK for Cyprus’s division, leading her to encounter an “Anglo-American conspiracy theory” (10:30).
• Meta-awareness and Humor: Cypriots are self-aware about their conspiratorial reputation—joking about being “a land of intrigue”—even as they discuss “deadly serious” issues of national division (14:47).
• Comparative Perspective: Davis began comparing conspiracy cultures in Cyprus and the US, realizing the need to make the comparison explicit (16:00).

Quote:

"There was something about the predominance of that discourse on conspiracy theory in Cyprus that led me to think that it might be a very interesting context in which to study conspiracy theory as a meta discourse."
— Davis (16:18)

3. Why Study Conspiracy Theory? Stakes, Periodization, and Ethnography

• Rise of Academic Interest: Davis observes renewed scholarly and popular concern with conspiracy theory in waves—1990s ‘millennial moment’ (e.g., The X-Files), post-2010, and the Trump era, cautioning against overly rigid periodization (17:30–21:30).
• Conspiracy’s Slippery Nature: Attempts to define, periodize, or contain “conspiracy theory” are fraught—its features, political valences, and epistemology shift across contexts (22:00–27:30).

Quote:

“Ultimately, the conclusion I came to was conspiracy theory actually isn’t a thing. It isn’t a stable enough object that it can sustain comparative thinking.”
— Davis (26:00)

• Ethnography’s Contribution: Davis sees anthropology as suited to illuminating the social and affective relations that sustain conspiracy cultures—moving beyond treating conspiracy as just ‘wrong belief’ to seeing its pragmatic and performative force.

4. Method: Combining Sources and the Challenges of Context

• Materials Used: Davis’s research triangulates archival documents, media coverage (newspapers in both Greek and Turkish), direct interviews, and participant observation (30:29–35:00).
• Cyprus as a Case Study: With its anomalous position (EU member but split internally; long history of division), Cyprus challenges ethnographers’ default reliance on national frameworks and “the local” (31:22–33:00).
• Case Study Focus: The theft of ex-president Tassos Papadopoulos’s remains (2009–10)—an event sparking rampant conspiracy theories across divided Cypriot publics—serves as her focal event to observe the recursive, dialogical nature of suspicion.

Quote:

“How do you set boundaries around the context? That remained the sort of challenge of this project from beginning to end and led to the central question of the book, which is about context.”
— Davis (43:35)

Key Concepts and Frameworks

5. Typology of Approaches to Conspiracy Theory (45:55–59:00)

Davis proposes a taxonomy of five major scholarly approaches (informed by her thorough reading across disciplines):

• Symptomatic: Conspiracy as a symptom of collective social disorder or malaise.
• Epistemological: Focus on the cognitive/logical features distinguishing conspiracy from other forms of knowledge.
• Psychoanalytic: Reads conspiracy as expression of psychic structure and fantasy (often projecting anxiety onto powerful ‘others’).
• Political: Conspiracy as political strategy, weapon, or signifier, though its valence (left, right, subaltern) is unstable.
• Particularist: The prevalent anthropological move—situating conspiracy theory within a specific “local” or cultural context.
  • Davis critiques this approach for:
    • Unreflective boundary-drawing (who is “in” the context, who is “out”)
    • Residual ethnocentrism (the anthropologist as rational, the “locals” as theorizers of suspicion.)

Quote:

"Conspiracy theory brings [ethnocentrism] out in anthropologists and it seems to go unremarked and unexamined."
— Davis (54:41)

6. Conspiracy Attunement: Toward a New Analytic (61:21–71:38)

• Problem with 'Belief': Rather than seeing conspiracy as a matter of false beliefs, Davis adapts phenomenological and linguistic frameworks to treat it as a shared affective orientation—a “sensory” and relational experience.
• Definition:
  Conspiracy Attunement is the phenomenological environment of discourse wherein individuals become ‘tuned in’—sharing sensitivities, humor, skepticism, and experiences around suspicion, regardless of national/cultural boundaries.
  • The context is not a nation, identity, or bounded group, but a shifting ensemble of relations, performances, affects, and shared histories of suspicion.
  • Difference from Previous Scholarship: Refuses to make Cyprus or “the local” the implicit context; instead, looks at who becomes “attuned” to suspicion in specific moments.
  • This analytic reframes conspiracy theory from a pathology or deviance to a mode of being-in-the-world with others who share the same grooves of doubt and humor.

Quote:

"So conspiracy attunement, I hope, can be a framework that sets a context for ethnographic research... It's not about Cypriot identity, it's about being in relation with other people who care about the things you care about and who use some of the same language that you use to talk about those things... It's a way of thinking about discourse as a phenomenological environment..."
— Davis (65:10)

In-Depth Case Study: The Theft of Tassos Papadopoulos’s Body

7. The Event and Its Aftermath (72:20–83:29)

• Theft and Reaction: The remains of Papadopoulos, former president and central figure in Cyprus’s modern history, were stolen in December 2009. Public discourse exploded with competing conspiracy theories (accusations against Turkish Cypriots, state actors, etc.).
• No Resolution: Even after three were arrested and convicted, many Cypriots rejected the official narrative; conspiracy theories persisted and mutated—demonstrating the non-resolving, recursive quality of conspiratorial thinking.
• Connecting Past and Present: The event is deeply entangled with Cyprus’s longer history of division—new suspicions are never simply “new” but echo and rework old ones.

Quote:

"The conspiracy theories didn't resolve into a public narrative that was very successful, as far as I could tell... From that perspective, this particular event could help us see some kind of general... insight... to this context of conspiracy attunement in which any new conspiracy theory is going to reproduce conspiracy theories from the past."
— Davis (77:40)

8. The Interlude: The Body as Site of Political Theology

• Why Did Papadopoulos’s Body Matter?
  • He was close to the “center of power for as long as Cyprus was a state” (79:29); his body became a “discursive site” for recursive suspicion, sacred horror (for some), or political critique (for others).
• Embodiment of Sovereignty: The episode opens questions about how power is embodied, why leaders’ remains matter, and what postmortem transgressions reveal about collective anxieties around sovereignty, state, and legitimacy (81:00–83:29).
• Comparative Cases: Briefly references other leaders' body controversies (Franco, Bolivar, Gaddafi) as comparative material.

Looking Forward: Davis’s Next Projects

9. Future Directions (84:17–90:11)

• “No Time After the Time of the Cannibals”: Davis jokes that recursive temporalities of suspicion are always with us.
• Research on Political Humor & Body Doubles: Inspired by thinking about Papadopoulos, Davis is working on body doubles and “political humor as critique.”
• Death Practices in Greece: Next major ethnographic research concerns burial, cremation, and how the deaths of migrants challenge social and religious norms about death in Greece and across regional borders.
• Film Project: Ongoing work on a film about “the public life of important bones,” connecting saints, leaders, and the missing in Cyprus.

Quote:

“My life in Cyprus is not over. And, you know, so I'm going to continue to pursue all of these projects as much as I can.”
— Davis (90:06)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• On Cyprus as a Place for Studying Conspiracy Theory:

  "I had to unlearn quite a bit in order to become, you know, a halfway decent ethnographer of Cyprus... One of the very first things I heard was that the US was responsible for the division of Cyprus." (09:52)

• On the Recursivity of Conspiracy Discourse:

  "There’s no closure. The official narrative just makes people more skeptical." (72:20)

• On the Pitfalls of Context:

  "How do you set boundaries around the context? That remained the sort of challenge of this project from beginning to end." (43:35)

• On Conspiracy Attunement:

  "Ultimately, I sort of came up with this concept of conspiracy attunement... It's a way of thinking about discourse as a phenomenological environment that can capture something of the way that people relate to one another across discrepancies in power and desire." (65:10)

Structure & Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Host/Guest | Timestamp | |----------------------------------|---------------------------|--------------| | Introduction & Davis’s Journey | Yadong / Davis | 02:04–07:57 | | Cyprus & Conspiracy Theories | Yadong / Davis | 07:57–16:30 | | The Stakes of Conspiracy Theory | Yadong / Davis | 16:30–28:39 | | Combining Sources, Methodology | Yadong / Davis | 29:39–44:54 | | Scholarly Typology | Yadong / Davis | 45:55–59:14 | | Conspiracy Attunement | Yadong / Davis | 61:21–71:38 | | Papadopoulos Case Study | Yadong / Davis | 72:20–83:29 | | Future Research | Yadong / Davis | 84:17–90:11 |

Concluding Thoughts

The Time of the Cannibals challenges easy typologies and ethnocentric readings of conspiracy theory, arguing instead for nuanced attention to the lived, affective, and social dimensions of suspicion. Davis's innovative concept of “conspiracy attunement” provides anthropologists and others with a more dynamic, relational tool for understanding conspiracy not as aberrant belief, but as a shared environment—a world of humor, fear, power, and ongoing negotiation.

Host: Yadong Li
Guest: Elizabeth Anne Davis
Book: The Time of the Cannibals: On Conspiracy Theory and Context (Fordham University Press, 2024)