Louder Than Words? Why Political Ethnography Cannot Fix the Flaws of Normative Behaviorism

This article engages with Jonathan Floyd’s normative behaviorism, and Simon Stevens’ recent criticism of this approach. Its objectives are two: First, the article challenges normative behaviorism’s reliance on crime and insurrection rates as measures of political discontent. I raise three distinct objections against using crime and insurrection rates for this purpose, and argue that these undermine normative behaviorism’s justificatory strategy. Second, the article rebuts Stevens’ suggestion that the flaws of normative behaviorism can be fixed by adding political ethnography to the picture. Rather than remedying the flaws, I argue that supplementing normative behaviorism with an ethnographic sensibility will deprive it of the very features that rendered it attractive in the first place. I conclude that if fixing the flaws of normative behaviorism requires us to transform it beyond recognition, we should rather reject it in the first place.