Common Concerns Corruption Talk: Challenging the Common Concerns Approach
Mar 19, 2026
Insa Koch, Professor of British Culture and corruption scholar, explores how people use 'corruption' to name moral failure, neglect, and broken institutions. Short, probing conversations examine austerity’s impact, Brexit as a mass rejection of an unresponsive system, and how everyday spaces and local practices create alternative forms of power and care.
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Corruption As Moral Failure Not Just Financial Crime
- People use 'corruption' broadly as moral failure, not just financial misuse of public funds.
- In deindustrialized UK communities corruption signals lack of care by elites and the state, linking scandals to local neglect of services.
Anti-Corruption Talk As Vernacular Political Ontology
- Anti-corruption talk functions as a vernacular political ontology explaining how power works and your place within it.
- People see power as an incomprehensible entity ('the system') made up of corrupt individuals, so blaming people and system merge.
Brexit As A Protest Vote Against The System
- Many first-time voters in Koch's community chose Leave to reject a political system they distrusted rather than from detailed cost–benefit reasoning.
- Brexit gave people a unique chance to say No to the system, even amid later economic harm like plant closures.