[Air-L] ANU School of Sociology seminar series: "The Sovereign Individual reloaded: surfacing Thiel’s alt-canon", Prof Roger Burrows (Bristol University)

[Thao Phan]

Dear all,

Please join us for the first ANU School of Sociology seminar series talk
for 2026!

*The Sovereign Individual reloaded: surfacing Thiel’s alt-canon*
Speaker: Prof Roger Burrows (Centre for Urban and Public Policy Research,
Bristol University)

Date: Tuesday 17 February, 2026
Time: 12 – 1pm
Location: RSSS Room 2.56, and Zoom
Registration:
https://events.humanitix.com/anu-school-of-sociology-seminar-series-prof-roger-burrows



*Title*

*The Sovereign Individual* reloaded: surfacing Thiel’s alt-canon

*Abstract*

Peter Thiel’s ideological commitments, financial networks and political
interventions reveal a deliberate effort to dismantle democratic governance
in favour of elite-controlled sovereignties. Drawing on Girard, Spengler,
Strauss and especially The Sovereign Individual (Davidson and Rees-Mogg),
Thiel envisions a world where wealth insulates elites from public
accountability, taxation and state oversight. His investments in
seasteading, Urbit, Palantir – whose CEO studied under Habermas – and
political figures such as J.D. Vance illustrate how these ideas shape
emerging governance structures.

Thiel’s alignment with neoreactionary (NRx) ideology, particularly Yarvin’s
patchwork GovCorp model and Land’s Dark Enlightenment, promotes corporate
autocracy, accelerationism and architectures of exit. This vision is
materialising in privatised jurisdictions, from financial corridors that
circumvent national regulation to autonomous city-states governed by market
logic. These developments signal a shift beyond neoliberalism, where
economic power is increasingly detached from state oversight.

By embedding these ideas in Silicon Valley, state institutions and
financial infrastructures, Thiel advances a model in which citizenship is
reduced to consumer choice, governance operates beyond democratic control
and sovereignty is reconfigured through technological means. This paper
situates Thiel’s project within broader sociological concerns about elite
withdrawal, so-called digital feudalism and the restructuring of governance
through technological and financial infrastructures.

*About the speaker*

Roger Burrows has worked in UK higher education since 1985, holding
positions at Surrey, Teesside, York, Goldsmiths, Newcastle and currently
Bristol, where he is Head of the Centre for Urban and Public Policy
Research (CUPPR). At Goldsmiths, he was Pro-Warden for Interdisciplinary
Development. He is also an Honorary Professorial Fellow at the University
of Melbourne’s Centre for Cities and an Adjunct Professor at the Australian
Centre for Housing Research, University of Adelaide.

His research spans housing, urban studies, digital cultures and social
inequalities. He has published over 170 works, with half focusing on
housing and urban studies and the rest covering theory, methods, digital
culture, health, global inequalities and higher education.

He was co-editor of Housing Studies (2002–2005) and led the UK ESRC
E-Society Programme (2005–2007). He has served as a UK REF assessor and
sits on the editorial boards of Body & Society and Theory, Culture &
Society. His recent work examines algorithmic risk profiling in housing,
the social geography of the super-rich, fintech use among young people and
the ideological foundations of neoreactionary (NRx) thought.