Why ethnographic sensibility cannot fix the flaws of normative behaviorism

In a recent article, Simon Stevens (2023) mounts an objection to Jonathan Floyd’s (2020) "normative behaviorism" (NB). According to Stevens, NB’s focus on crime and insurrection as the sole measures of the legitimacy of political institutions fails to capture discontent within groups that, precisely due to the prevailing political order, lack ability or opportunity to engage in these activities. By failing to acknowledge the discontent of vulnerable groups such as the homeless, the disabled, and indigenous peoples, NB will produce a falsely positive view of the legitimacy of political institutions that fail to cater to the interests of these groups. To remedy this, Stevens proposes that normative theorists conduct political theory with an "ethnographic sensibility". By closely engaging with the reasons and actions of the members of vulnerable groups, theorists will come to recognize expressions of political discontent that could complement NB’s focus on crime and insurrection. This paper adds to the critique of NB. In addition to erring on the side of the positive, I argue that the focus on crime and insurrection also leads NB to err on the side of the negative, producing falsely negative estimations of the legitimacy of political institutions. This becomes clear once we focus on particular groups that do commit crime or insurrection – including tax evaders, neo-nazis, and the Trump-supporters behind the Capitol attack in 2021. According to NB, these groups' expressions of political discontent suggest that something is wrong with our political institutions. But this is true only if we adopt a maximally wide approach of what we hold political institutions responsible for – something I argue that NB should wish to avoid. Importantly, Stevens’ ethnographic sensibility, even if complemented by an element of "fiction" (Frazer 2017), offers no remedy to the problem of false negatives. Instead, my argument reveals that Stevens’ account is reasonable only if preceded by a different theory – comprising both epistemic and normative components – that tells us to which groups, or members of a group, we should direct our ethnographic attention. This, however, would deprive NB of the status as an independent theory of justification that its defenders claim for it.