Niche construction through gossip and mobbing: The mediation of violence in technocognitive niches

Abstract

As hinted in the previous chapter, gossip is empowered by a “pragmatic” notion of truth, according to which truth, at least in social matters, is the opinion held by the majority of authoritative sources. The power of gossip relies in the immediate pragmatic enactment of the predicated truth, as acknowledged by (Taylor, Good gossip pp. 34–46 1994). Magnani, in Understanding violence. Morality, religion, and violence intertwined: a philosophical stance (2011) opened a new perspective on the philosophical study of violence, showing how even the maintenance of cognitive niches involves coalitions supporting axiological positions, likely to trigger violence, either structural or individualized. Even if topics such as mobbing and bullying deriving from gossip might seem void of philosophical relevance, cultural studies such as the Girardian tradition (Girard, The scapegoat [1982] 1986; Violence and the sacred [1972], 1977; Job: The victim of his people [1985] 1987) show how a mechanism called mimetic rivalry, rooted in envy and fear against differences, informs an historically ever-present motif: scapegoating, and other related methods for resolving conflicts and crises. In this chapter, I will take advantage of the emergence of a contemporary phenomenon, that is mobbing in Social Networking websites, as a case illuminating two issues. First, the violent element embedded even in the most innocuous gossiping appraisal; second, the kinds of sidetracking that might happen when a long-established cognitive behavior—such as gossip—is so-to-say translated into a different cognitive niche, which seems to afford a new, potentiated version: should we say that we are facing the same behavior?.