Populism describes those strategies which actors endorsing populist ideas must use in order to be considered populist. Typical populist strategies include the hijacking of state institutions; the development of clientelistic relationships with constituencies labelled the people, or employing certain rhetorical moves in which enmity between the people and a corrupt elite looms large. In this paper, I argue against tendencies to define populism according to a specific set of tactics that are supposed to flow directly from (...) class='Hi'>populist ideas. Instead, populism should be understood in terms of a particular orientation, which grounds and justifies a range of strategies, all of which – nefarious or otherwise – should be considered populist. This orientation posits that enmity between ‘the people’ and an elite is a defining feature of political life, in part because it is responsible for serious failures in a country’s ostensibly democratic institutions. These failures create a degree of ambivalence with respect to these institutions’ claims to authority and obedience, and generate the perception that political actors thereby enjoy an expanded set of moral permissions. Finally, populists argue that elites prosecute revanchist projects aimed at resisting populist pathways to power and undermining them once in office. Populist strategies then are simply whatever range of tactics political actors use who accept the validity of that above orientation. (shrink)

This article offers a new understanding of populism. The argument unfolds as follows: first, the populist literature is reviewed and two main approaches are identified: ontic and logic-oriented, the more important of which is the Schmitt-Laclau logic of enmity. While the authors broadly agree with Laclau’s criticism of ontic approaches, they endorse neither his ontological understanding of enmity, nor his claim that populism is politics, and enmity is the logic of populism. Next, the origins of populism are located in (...) a paradox at the heart of democracy. Democracy defines itself as a community of inclusion, yet exclusion is constitutive of inclusion, including therefore democratic inclusion. Then is discussed what the authors believe to be the true logic of populism: resentment. Unlike enmity, which functions in Laclau’s populist theory as an ontology of non-identity, resentment operates within a rivalrous framework, which presupposes identification between the parts and refers to a set of normative commitments. Finally, the article concludes by presenting an understanding of populism as a specific logic of political action. (shrink)

The article is devoted to populism as a political phenomenon and as an object of analysis in po- litical theory. The focus is on the debate around the definition of populism. The article reviews various approaches to the study of populism, particularly ideological and discursive approaches. The author also analyses populism from the point of view of the normative theory of democracy and discusses the issue whether populism is a threat to liberal democracy or a correction of it. The problem (...) of defining ‘the people’, a key populist concept, is considered separately, and it is concluded that nationalist and populist discourses essentially intersect, so it is impossible to separate them completely. The article argues for a discursive approach to populism. Populism’s primary feature is a claim to speak in the name of the people. Populism is an element of the representative demo- cracy and represents both its constant potential and a menace to it. Populism also appeals to the claim for democratic legitimacy that is a basic normative demand in modern societies. It is logi- cal to consider populism not as the essential characteristic of a political actor (party, movement, leader) who is or is not a populistic but as the aggregation of the populist repertoire, a combina- tion of its elements and their orientation. (shrink)

Oriented, descriptively, by recent liberal definitions of populism, this essay pursues a historical-materialist definition that grounds populist antagonisms in class struggles as ‘crystallised’ in the capitalist state. A critical assessment of Laclau’s early equation of populism and socialism inaugurates the reading of Poulantzas’s relational account of class and state as a nascent framework for a theory of populism, centred on the state and its ideological crystallisation of individualisation, the mental/manual-labour division and the ‘people-nation’. This framework is then expanded to (...) articulate the political-economic core of populist antagonisms, the specific character of ‘neoliberal populism’ today, and the potential, in relation to theories of ‘popular politics’ and a ‘communist people’, that left-wing populism might hold as a process of new political productions of class. This reading provides for a more expansive account of such movements’ potentials, beyond a threat to or correction of pre-determined democratic or Marxist schemas. (shrink)

Based on a major research project funded by the European Commission,_ Populism, Media and Education_ studies how discriminatory stereotypes are built online with a particular focus on right-wing populism. Globalization and migration have led to a new era of populism and racism in Western countries, rekindling traditional forms of discrimination through innovative means. New media platforms are being seen by populist organizations as a method to promote hate speech and unprecedented forms of proselytism. Race, gender, disability and sexual (...) class='Hi'>orientation are all being used to discriminate and young people are the preferred target for populist organizations and movements. This book examines how media education can help to deconstruct such hate speech and promote young people’s full participation in media-saturated societies. Drawing on rich examples from Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Italy, Slovenia, and the UK - countries characterized by different political and cultural contexts – _Populism, Media and Education_ addresses key questions about the meaning of new populism, the nature of e-engagement, and the role of education and citizenship in the digital century. With its international and interdisciplinary approach, this book is essential reading for academics and students in the areas of education, media studies, sociology, cultural studies, political sciences, discrimination and gender studies. (shrink)

What is the relationship between right-wing populism and contemporary fascism? How has fascism changed since the 1920s? And how do the answers to these questions concern a global shift that can be called the Great Unsettling—including a postmodern fracturing of prior modern ‘certainties’ about the nature of subjectivity, political practice and meaning, deconstructing the consequences of ‘truth’? This essay seeks to respond to these questions by first going back to foundational issues of defnition and elaborating the meaning of populism and (...) fascism in relation to their structural ‘moving parts’. Using this alternative scaffolding, the essay argues that right-wing populism and an orientation to postmodern fascism represented by Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro have converged. The context of this convergence is a globalizing shift that now challenges democratic politics. (shrink)

This article articulates and explores a localist conception of citizenship that stands in contrast to more liberal, neoliberal and cosmopolitan conceptions. A localist orientation, and some real sy...

Contemporary ‘crisis studies’ seek to advance democracy by emphasizing the threats that technocracy and populism pose to a specific form of it, liberal- democracy. Crisis studies argue that, since the 1970s, technocratic policymak- ing has deepened economic inequality. This has fostered citizenly anger, which populists exploit. Four well-known iterations of this argument are evaluated using a political realist lens. Political realism emphasizes the histor- ical context of politics, actors’ possible motives, and a normative orientation derived from the political order (...) itself, rather than an external ethico-moral ideal. The realist lens encourages comparison of crisis studies with historical political theory, which situates liberal-democracy within the long-term devel- opment of oligarchic systems of authority, and political history, which portrays technocracy as a product of the well-funded reaction to assertions of the democratic impulse that began in the 1970s. Populism is in this view not so much a perversion of liberal-democracy as it is a perhaps unintended conse- quence of anti-democratic reaction. The crisis studies make this error because based on a moral defence of the justice of the liberal-democratic order. Revealing the democratically unhelpful moralism at the core of crisis studies demonstrates the usefulness of political realism as a form of applied political theory, and not simply theory about theory. (shrink)

This study contributes to the definition of populism as a significant current of thought in modern China through a focus on the development of the populist ideas of Liang Shuming . It provides an avenue to understanding a major thinker and social activist of modern China. At the same time, through a comparison with Russian Narodism, it develops populism as a general sociohistorical concept, denoting a constellation of ideas which emerges in a specific historical environment and includes a concern (...) with rural society and a critique of the modern West in the context of questions of the moral nature of progress. ;The dissertation describes the origins and development of Liang's ideas, presenting them against the background of major intellectual tendencies of the times. After an early urban, Westernizing focus, Liang arrived at a populist approach relatively late. A persisting habit of thought, involving a metaphor of mind, informed his early concerns, his attention to the ambiguities of progress and to the appeals of socialism, and his later foci on a critique of the West, an historical approach, and a particular concept of the psyche. The events of the 1920's provided the context in which Liang was able to reconcile his disparate concerns and develop a mature populist theory in which the villages provided a practical intersection of individual subjectivity and history. ;In the evolution of his ideas, Liang Shuming shared with other Chinese, Zhang Taiyan, Zhang Shizhao, Li Dazhao, and Mao Zedong, affinities which help define populism as a broad current of thought still important in China. A critique of the West and desire to skip over capitalism on the way to the future have more weight in Chinese populism than does a focus on rural society. In the absence of a specifically populist political movement, the historical importance of Chinese populism has derived from its interpenetration with Marxist ideas. One potential of the legacy of Chinese populism is to provide a self-conscious orientation toward the future from the perspective of a critique of both the Western present and the Chinese past. (shrink)

What are the social dynamics behind the rise and resilience of today’s authoritarian regimes? This paper seeks to answer this question by focusing on the longest lasting elected autocracy of our era, the AKP (Justice and Development Party) regime in Turkey. Building on the authoritarian neoliberalism literature’s criticism of the scholarship on competitive authoritarianism, I point out the seeds of authoritarianism in the pro-market reforms of the 1980s–2000s. However, both literatures fail to address the popular embrace of authoritarianism. In critical (...) engagement with analyses of fascism, I develop the concept ‘democratic autocracy’: a parliamentarised, individualised, personalistic, and relatively more market-oriented, twenty-first century version of fascism. The democratic autocracy in Turkey organises and mobilises the people through parties, youth and aid associations, paramilitary organisations, and unions. However, both unresolved economic crises and democratic autocracy’s sociopolitical dynamics set limits to its resilience, as well as to the sustainability of its parliamentarism. (shrink)

This paper elaborates on a theory of the ideological public sphere in the age of digital media. It describes the public sphere as an initially ascending and then descending communication process that includes both polarising and integrating publics, which are organised by antagonistic media and compromise-building mass media. This framework allows us to distinguish between hegemonic, populist, and popular-oriented flows of communication, as well as register changes in the interplay of different publics driven by digital media platforms. Digital transformations (...) of the public sphere give rise to antagonistic and networked-individualistic flows of populist communication that put public hegemony under constant pressure. The challenge is to find ways to strengthen popular communications that enable democratic learning processes and the flourishing of communicative competences of all citizens. (shrink)

Responsible innovation (RI), also termed Responsible Research and Innovation, has emerged due to increasing concern over how to integrate ethical and societal values into research and innovation policy and governance (Von Schomberg 2013), in response to questioning of the societal role of science as well as populist resurgence in some countries (Long and Blok 2017a). Within a RI approach, innovators must consider three dimensions of responsibility, including the dimensions of (1) ‘avoiding harm’ to people and the planet, (2) ‘doing (...) good’ through the offering of innovations that foster sustainable development, and (3) the development of facilitative global governance schemes (Voegtlin and Scherer 2017). (shrink)

Why do some business associations mobilize, engage in collective action, and take public stands against the populist right while others do not? This article examines business mobilization against the populist right in Germany, which is heavily export-oriented and reliant on the European and global market order. Drawing on interviews with three business associations, the article presents three key findings. First, economic self-interest is a powerful driver of business mobilization: perceived threats and vulnerability spurred two German associations to act (...) collectively against right-wing populism. However, mobilization is driven not by declining revenues or profits but by a mixture of values and material interests. Second, business associations that mobilize stress the need to reform the system, democratize the European Union, and address those who feel “left behind.” Third, medium-size, export-oriented manufacturers are the core business constituency supporting liberal democracy and the European Union. The article shows that some business factions can play a role in defending the liberal international order against right-wing populism. (shrink)

Two recent books on populism represent more than any other the new mainstream in populism studies. Through a reconstruction of the main arguments advanced by Jan-Werner Müller, on the one hand, and Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, on the other, this article aims to highlight both the significant accomplishments as well as the main limitations of this orientation. Special attention is given to the way in which the two projects deal with the relationship between populism and democracy. In (...) this respect, substantial differences emerge between them, largely due to the different scope of each intervention: Müller articulates a polemical argument, while Mudde and Kaltwasser seem to encompass a more nuanced research agenda. And yet, despite all their differences, the two books share a common definitional basis when they identify moralization and moralism as the kernel of populist ideology. It is here, however, that the shaky basis of the new mainstream is revealed. Apart from betraying substantive continuities with a discredited Cold War pluralism, this moralistic stress seems ultimately inadequate to function as the central criterion for the differential identification of populism. (shrink)

The Politics of Orientation provides the first substantial exploration of a surprising theoretical kinship and its rich political implications, between Gilles Deleuze's philosophy and the sociological systems theory of Niklas Luhmann. Through their shared theories of sense, Hannah Richter draws out how the works of Luhmann and Deleuze complement each other in creating worlds where chaos is the norm and order the unlikely and yet remarkably stable exception. From the encounter between Deleuze and Luhmann, Richter develops a novel take (...) on postfoundational ontology where subjects and societies unfold in self-productive relations of sense against a background of complexity. The Politics of Orientation breaks and rebuilds theoretical alliances by reading core concepts and thinkers of Continental Philosophy, from Leibniz to Whitehead and Marx, through this encounter. Most importantly, the book puts Luhmann and Deleuze to work to offer urgently needed insight into the rise of post-truth populism. In our complex democratic societies, Richter argues, orientation against complexity has become the ground of political power, privileging the simplistic narratives of the populist right. (shrink)

Este trabajo explora la concepción de Marsilio de Padua sobre el poder dentro de una teoría ascendente de gobierno. Siguiendo la línea de la crítica medieval a la plenitudopotestatis , él propone, desde una orientación populista de su doctrina, una organización sociopolítica cuyo fundamento es la voluntas populi y la ley que de allí emana. Es así como en su obra El defensor de la paz puede encontrarse una sorprendente visión republicana de la política, donde la esfera religiosa queda absorbida (...) por la dimensión estatal. La salvación del mundo profano queda, por consiguiente, en sus propias manos, y la praxis intramundana se halla desprovista del auxilio que prestaban los viejos expedientes extracotidianos. Marsilius of Padua and emerging theories of government This paper explores the view maintained by Marsilius of Padua on power within an ascendant theory of government. Following the line of medieval criticism of plenitudo potestatis , he proposes, from a populist orientation of his doctrine, a socio-political organization founded upon the voluntas populi and the law that emanates from it. Thus, readers will be surprised to find a Republican view of politics in his work The Defender of Peace, where the State dimension absorbs the religious sphere. Salvation from the profane world is, therefore, in the State's own hands, and worldly practice is devoid of relief once provided by extraquotidian old records.  . (shrink)

Post-Structuralist Discourse Theory analyzes political ideas and action from a Marxist direction. However, while classic Marxian sociology is rooted in economic processes that “structure” society and ideas, Post-Structuralist Discourse Theory emphasizes the absence of any determinative principle. Thus, it radicalizes an ongoing shift in Marxism away from economic essentialism towards indeterminacy, contingency, and openness. The ideological superstructure becomes ever more important at the expense of the economic base; class struggle and relations of production lose analytical and strategic purchase in favor (...) of a complex and integral form of politics; there are no deeper, natural foundations determining how society is organized and structured. Post-Structuralist Discourse Theorists argue that this orientation leads to a more satisfactory analysis of political practice than is possible through positivist research. Assessing this claim requires a survey of the hermetic terminology in which Post-Structuralist Discourse Theorists express their ideas—the discourse, as it were, of Discourse Theorists—exploring their use of sociology, structuralist linguistics, psychoanalysis, and the political theory of populism. (shrink)

Populism in politics and policy orientations in law have thrown the jurisdiction of the academy and the disciplines of interpretation into disarray. Critique flounders in abstraction and negativity, law loses itself in particularity. Administering Interpretation brings together philosophers, humanists, and jurists from both continental and Anglophone jurisdictions to reassess the status and trajectory of interpretative theory as applied in the art of law. Tracking the thread of philosophical influences upon the community of legal interpretation, the essays move from the translation (...) and wake of Derrida to the work of Agamben, from deconstruction to oikononmia. Sharing roots in the philological excavation of the political theology of modern law, contributors assess the failure of secularism and the continuing theological borrowings of juridical interpretation. The book brings contemporary critique to bear upon the interpretative apparatuses of exclusion, the law of spectacular sovereignty, and the bodies that lie in its wake. (shrink)

In the article reviewed the development of Ukrainian historiography 60-90-ies. XIX century figure of Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny. The figure of Hetman Sahaidachnyy occupied an important place in Early Cossack time. The political and social activist, defender of the Orthodox faith, a distinguished diplomat of his time, the head of the biggest campaigns against the Turks, he was a man that influenced the social life as none of Cossack leaders before. An outstanding figure of the Hetman interests historians who contributed to appearance (...) of a large volume of scientific papers. There are no universal historiographical systematization of the existing researchs that generates problems in the study of person Petro Konashevych. The goal of the article is to highlight the situation of historiographical figure of the hetman Sahaidachnyy in this period. Historical views of Ukrainian historians populist direction Kulish, V. Antonovych and representative national - statist direction M. Kostomarov are analyzed. In the writings of historians of this period have been formulated theory of perception the main outstanding figure of the hetman: as a citizen under the Polish crown, who was obedient executor of the royal will. The opinion of Sahaidachnyy as an independent supervisor relatively mature social community, conscious of reformist organizational activity and considered himself the right to stand at the level of the Polish administration, protecting the interests of their own community by political means - by negotiations. Kulish actually substantiated the idea of perception Sahaidachnyy as a citizen under the Polish Crown, who was obedient executor of the royal will. Volodymyr Antonovych thought Hetman independently acting head relatively mature social community, which considered himself to become valid on level with the Polish administration and defend the interests of their own community by political means - by negotiations. For ideas Kostomarov, to some extent, based interpretation of evolution of Sahaydachnyy as slave Polish crown. The historian, proceeding from its own national-statist conception of historical development, a critical figure of Sahaidachnyy analyzed in terms of the implementation of national affairs and its impact on the formation of state-building elements in the national environment. (shrink)

In the wake of populist challenges throughout the past decade in the U.S. and Europe, liberalism has been described as elitist and out of touch, concerned with protecting and promoting material interests with an orientation that is pragmatic, legalistic, and technocratic. Simultaneously, liberal governments have become increasingly detached from the middle class and its moral needs for purpose and belonging. If liberalism cannot provide spiritual sustenance, individuals will look elsewhere for it, especially in illiberal forms of populism. -/- (...) In Kant, Liberalism, and the Meaning of Life, Jeffrey Church addresses the "meaning deficit" in contemporary liberal societies. Focusing on Immanuel Kant's largely neglected early lectures on anthropology from the 1760s and 1770s, Church argues that Kant's work can serve as a basis for a more meaningful liberalism, one that conceives of freedom and equality for all as a moral vocation of citizens and institutions. Church also asserts that Kant's early view of the meaning of life has important implications for understanding his political theory. Kant saw liberal community as something that helps us realize our destiny on earth as the distinctively free creatures we are. Liberalism, then, is not elitist but a participatory project of all members of society. It is not concerned primarily with material things but with our moral destiny. It is not pragmatic but principled. -/- Church holds that Kant's liberalism rests on a view of the meaning of human existence, and so analyzes Kant's view of the meaning of life and its application to his politics. In particular, Church contends that a fundamental concern included in Kant's liberalism, largely unrecognized by scholars, is to foster the meaning of life for citizens of liberal republican orders. At the same time, Church applies Kant's views of the meaning of life to contemporary problems in liberalism. In particular, he argues that Kant's view of a meaningful liberalism can provide a counterweight to the recent rise of illiberal nationalist or religious forms of community that seem attractive to liberal citizens hungering for meaning in a disenchanted world. Compelling and ambitious, Jeffrey Church provides the first extended treatment of Kant's understanding of the meaning of life and a powerful alternative to procedural liberalism. (shrink)

Post-communist anti-Semitism in Romania and elsewhere in East Central Europe is not necessarily driven by the same motivations. Basically, each of the categories I employ in the taxonomy (updating earlier endeavors) acts out of a different motivation and has a different temporal orientation. What they all share, however, is precisely the attempt to respond to the need to produce what Benedict Anderson called an “imagined community,” in albeit significantly different positive terms of reference. A distinction is made between the (...) following taxonomic categories of “producers” of anti-Semitism: a) “Selfexculpatory nostalgic anti-Semitism;” b) “Self-propelling anti-Semitism”; c) “Neo-populist mercantile anti-Semitism”: d) “Utilitarian anti-Semitism”; e) “Reactive anti-Semitism; and, finally, f) “Vengeance anti-Semitism.&rdquo. (shrink)

US citizens perceive their society to be one of the most diverse and religiously tolerant in the world today. Yet seemingly intractable religious intolerance and moral conflict abound throughout contemporary US public life - from abortion law battles, same-sex marriage, post-9/11 Islamophobia, public school curriculum controversies, to moral and religious dimensions of the Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street movements, and Tea Party populism. Healthy Conflict in Contemporary American Society develops an approach to democratic discourse and coalition-building across deep (...) moral and religious divisions. Drawing on conflict transformation in peace studies, recent American pragmatist thought, and models of agonistic democracy, Jason Springs argues that, in circumstances riven with conflict between strong religious identities and deep moral and political commitments, productive engagement may depend on thinking creatively about how to constructively utilize conflict and intolerance. The result is an approach oriented by the recognition of conflict as a constituent and life-giving feature of social and political relationships. (shrink)

Affect and emotion have come to dominate discourse on social and political life in the mobile and networked societies of the early 21st century. This volume introduces a unique collection of essential concepts for theorizing and empirically investigating societies as Affective Societies. The concepts engender insights into the affective foundations of social coexistence and are indispensable to comprehend the many areas of conflict linked to emotion such as migration, political populism, or local and global inequalities. Each chapters provides historical (...) class='Hi'>orientation; detailed explication of the concept in question, clear-cut research examples, and an outlook toward future research. (shrink)

This is an introduction to my edited book, the Research Handbook on Liberalism (2024). Some chapters tackle broad, meta-level questions about the coherence and justificatory limits and possibilities of liberalism; others tackle conceptual issues; still others, specific institutional, cultural, historical, and political questions. This introductory chapter is intended to provide a general orientation to these discussions, but also highlight some recurring themes and challenges facing liberalism in an era of rampant inequality, illiberalism, rising autocracies, populism, and massive technological change. (...) I provide a taxonomy of five different kinds of liberalism in play in the field, along with three overarching challenges discussed in the book - the apparent insufficiency, complacency, and self-undermining nature of liberalism. Can contemporary liberalism survive? It can, but not without clearly grasping some of the fundamental challenges it faces today. (shrink)

Inspired by the work of Hannah Arendt, this response article focusses on the tension between hope in the future and lost hope in the present inherent in the modern idea of progress. The backdrop of the Suite ‘Education after Progress’ is some of the interrelated challenges that we are facing today, such as climate change, new pandemics, mass migration, and the rise of populism. Drawing on different philosophical concepts and strands, the five articles in the Suite explore what it would (...) mean to learn and educate beyond the imagery of progress. Thinking beyond, however, is never an easy task and the question becomes how to orient oneself in this new philosophical landscape without losing track of what is educationally important and meaningful. After responding to each article, focussing on five possible connections between them (change, orientation, time, situatedness, and immanence), the response article concludes with the more general question of what place, if any, concepts as the past, conservation, and preservation have in an education ‘after’ progress. (shrink)

In the perspective of Hasan Hanafi, the renewal of Islamic thought in the Arab world must produce a new concept of theology and present a cultural revolution. A new theology must be developed through a progressive life perspective rooted in liberation and social justice. It is intended to free Arab–Islamic society from regression and fragmentation, producing a society that is just, prosperous, and civilized. The renewal of Islamic thought must be progressive to ensure it can produce a cultural revolution that (...) can create a populistic social and ideological structure in Arab life, thereby ensuring that the faithful are intelligent, modern, and have a high level of social solidarity. This study is guided by the theory of cultural intensification, which emphasizes that the relations between individuals and society are rooted in sociological, psychological, and theological challenges, and holds that social and divine laws are intended to promote a personal/collective emotional involvement in social life. The analysis emphasizes the relationship between Hasan Hanafi, as an individual, with general Arab society, with a focus on his understanding of social challenges, the psychological condition of Arab society, and classical theology. This study indicates that the Arab–Islamic world requires a new theology, one that is anthropocentric, populistic, and transformative, which remains grounded and oriented towards the realization of prosperity and social justice. Cultural revolution, meanwhile, offers a liberational ideology for the subjugated as well as legitimization for every social struggle. It also holds that no entity that exists on its own, without any humanitarian context, has meaning; there is only a correlational truth connecting objective reality and universal human values. As such, new theology—in conjunction with cultural revolution—can radically transform the orientation of Arab–Islamic thought from static, passive, and traditional to progressive and oppositional. In doing so, it can offer liberation and social justice.Contribution: This article provides intelectual framework to dissect Hasan Hanafi’s new theological ideas by using cultural perspective, particularly cultural intensification theory, as well as work praxis in effort to build democratic, egalitarian, just, equality before the law, and uphold human rights of Muslim society. (shrink)

In the age of iDeology - in which individual access and participation to technology is about to replace the rich texture of religion, culture, tradition and political convictions - the social impact of media discourse only magnifies. This volume is an attempt to explore the influence of ever-available communication content on the minds and behavior of a population that has made the permanent and often obsessive use of communication technology a defining element of social orientation. Unlike the many accounts (...) that focus on the remarkably redefined patterns in the context of Western society - ranging from twittering Presidents to the emerging populist movements all over Europe - this volume portrays the situation from the frequently neglected perspective of the global periphery. As opposed to simply transfer and measure perspectives taken from a Western point of view, the clear intention of this volume is to provide ample space for the sincere and explorative consideration of local characteristics and settings of the different social, cultural and political contexts and therefore contribute to providing the ground for future research. (shrink)

In recent times South African politics has come to exhibit features typical of many post-colonial contexts, not least the rise of acrimonious and confrontational politics based around personalities and forms of populism. In such contexts rational dialogue and democratic deliberation become increasingly difficult to get going and to sustain. Drawing on Richard Turner's The Eye of the Needle, first published some forty years ago, the paper examines the role religion, and religious organisations, could play in returning such acrimonious public debate (...) to more democratic and visionary grounds. The key point is that religion offers a form of transcendence from the divisive and bitter particularities that animate contemporary political conflicts. It does this through the spiritual affirmation of our shared human worth due to the love of God. From this recognition, achieved through spiritual appeals, the conditions for more rational and democratic debate can be retrieved. In addition, religious transcendence redeems the value of utopian thinking, and thus could help re-orientate public debate from a politics of blame for past wrongs to a politics of imagining of future rights. (shrink)

In recent years the humanities, social sciences and neuroscience have witnessed an 'affective turn, ' especially in discourses around post-Fordist labor, economic and ecological crises, populism and identity politics, mental health, and political struggle. This new awareness would be unthinkable without the pioneering work of Gilles Deleuze, who replaced judgment with affect as the very material movement of thought: every concept is an affective experience, a becoming. Besides entirely active affects, the highest practice of thought, there is no thought without (...) passive affects or passions. Instead of a calm and rational philosophy of passions, Deleuzian thought is therefore inseparable from "isolated and passionate cries" that deny what everybody knows and what nobody can deny: "every true thought is an aggression." This inseparability of reason and passion is by no means an anti-intellectualist or irrationalist stance. Rather, it is critical, since it protects reason from its self-imposed stupidity (betise) by relating it to the unthought forces that condition it. And it is clinical, because thought becomes possessed by a power of selection. The purely active, i.e. free-floating, unrecorded desire, is never enough to produce a consistent relation to the future, which is why we need the passions to give us an initial orientation, to force and enable us to think. Passions are the beliefs, perceptions, representations, and opinions that attach us to the world; they make up the very material of which our lives and thoughts are composed. Instead of truth as the ultimate criterion of judgment, the only principle according to which affective becomings can be selected and evaluated is the extent to which they proliferate joy. Spinoza and Marx show how the recruitment of desire traditionally takes place through the tyrants and priests who inspire sad passions in us. Similarly, the work of Deleuze and Guattari on capitalism and schizophrenia can be read as an encyclopedia of the passions that constitute the affective infrastructure of the socius of contemporary capitalism. If it takes a lot of inventiveness or imagination to be able to diagnose our present becomings, this is because becomings are always composites of joyful and sad passions. Capitalism could not exist if it did not also inspire happiness, love, courage, and perhaps even beatitude. That is why, today, we witness "the spectacle of the happily dominated" (Frederic Lordon) of the self-entrepreneur, the managerial class, the flex worker, the citizen-consumer, the bean-roasting hipster, and the self-managed team. It is within this field of contradictory and heterogeneous passions that the authors of this volume pursue the diagnosis of our past and present becomings. Their contributions add up to a systematic taxonomy of the passions and indicate their importance for a thinking that reaches beyond itself. (shrink)

Technocracy is a contested concept, but it is typically associated with the exercise of political power justified by claims to expertise, and is often contrasted with populist forms of politics. In Power Without Knowledge, Jeffrey Friedman reframes the concept of technocracy as a form of politics oriented to solving social and economic problems, and thereby extends it to cover not only epistemic elites but ordinary people. This move usefully challenges the simplistic framing of populism and technocracy as opposites, but (...) at the expense of effacing other dimensions of democratic politics. Friedman also suggests that maximizing individuals’ exit opportunities will allow them to take advantage of their relatively reliable personal knowledge. The architecture of “exitocracy” would itself, however, be designed by experts who, as such, might be tempted to insulate the institutional architecture they design against democratic interference. (shrink)

There has been an outpouring of research on right-wing populist conservatism since the advent of the Trump presidency and right-wing movements in Europe. Yet, little research has been devoted to divisions among conservatives themselves, especially among conservative academics. Although Trump has maintained remarkable unity within the Republican Party for electoral reasons, he has fostered sharp divisions among conservative intellectuals and academicians. This article compares 102 politically conservative professors who are Trumpists and 80 conservative professors who are anti-Trumpists. All 182 (...) function as public intellectuals who advocate their views in print and digital media. Drawing on recent research in the sociology of intellectuals and particularly Pierre Bourdieu’s analytical field perspective, this article proposes a fielding political identities and practices framework to show how these two groups of professors (Trumpists and anti-Trumpists) differ in where they teach, their intellectual orientations, their scholarly productivity, where they network with think tanks, scholarly professional associations, and government agencies, and their stances on key issues surrounding the Trump presidency. The academic Trumpists embrace the right-wing populist wave mobilized by Trump and the conservative academic critics resist this move. This polarization of views between these two groups of conservative professors is enduring and rooted in two distinct social networks that connect positions in the academic field to affiliations with think tanks, government agencies, and professional associations in the field of power that reinforce their respective political identities. This research contributes to political sociology, the sociology of intellectuals, and the sociology of conservative politics in American higher education. (shrink)

Culture has been at the core of many recent developments in the social sciences, particularly after the so-called ‘linguistic turn’. This has also been seeping into discussions about the relation between culture and politics. The present paper proposes a specific theoretical approach in this respect. It mobilizes Castoriadis’s concept of the ‘imaginary’, as well as those of ‘collective subjectivity’ and ‘social creativity’. It also makes use of the rich case of ‘populism’, more generally, and Peronism, more specifically, so as to (...) make clear its workings in a sociological strategy that unfolds in both the theoretical and the empirically-oriented domains. The paper offers an alternative to Alexander’s and Laclau’s approaches to culture and politics. (shrink)

Considering recent re-assessments of Pareto and Mosca, I discuss whether these thinkers’ socio-political orientations contribute to the ‘disfiguration’ of democracy or provide a resource for the renewal of democratic institutions. Femia presents Pareto as being in the “Machiavellian tradition of sceptical liberalism,” revealing the liberal potential of Pareto’s realist political theory. Finocchiaro ameliorates the conservative consequences of Mosca’s thought by reinterpreting him as a ‘democratic elitist,’ who holds a conception of political liberty “as a relationship such that authority flows from (...) the masses to the elites.” Highlighting the significance of internal tensions within each thinker’s work foregrounded by these readings, between the causal primacy of psychic states and the ‘mutual dependence’ of social factors, and between the elite principle and ‘balanced pluralism’, I ask whether the ‘sceptical liberal’ Pareto or the ‘democratic elitist’ Mosca elude Urbinati’s unpolitical, populist and plebiscitarian ‘disfigurations’ of democracy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Music Education in an Age of Virtuality and Post-Truth by Paul WoodfordPanagiotis A. KanellopoulosPaul Woodford, Music Education in an Age of Virtuality and Post-Truth (New York, Routledge, 2018)This book is provocative. And challenging. It is written with passion, aiming to induce controversy. And with good reason. For we live in times when populism professes an illusionary sense of community, invoking a seemingly 'anti-systemic' but highly hypocritical, racist, and (...) sexist discourse;1 in times where "bullshitting"2 has advanced to the highest governmental levels in many countries; in times where "authoritarian neoliberal statism"3 becomes the new status quo, inducing a scandalous increase of economic inequalities, forcing large populations to live precarious lives; in times where privatization of educational services in the context of market-oriented practices impose restrictive and ultimately unjust politics of accountability and performativity;4 in times where instrumentalization of educational ends has taken the lead, assisted by a systematic co-option and misappropriation of notions such as excellence and creativity;5 in times, finally, where spaces that allow for "the sharing (out) of the incalculable,"6 forging unknown potentialities in education, life, and thought, are being destroyed. In such times, Paul Woodford has stepped in, reclaiming his right to speak uncompromisingly.Hannah Arendt has written that "[w]hen men [sic] are deprived of the public space--which is constituted by acting together and then fills of its own accord [End Page 108] with the events and stories that develop into history--they retreat into their freedom of thought."7 Woodford refuses to retreat. He writes as a public intellectual of the highest order, committed to upset and not please those in power. A great service that his latest book performs is that it speaks daringly, stirring a debate that helps us all to do away with fear. For as Bertrand Russell has aptly said quite a long time ago, "[I]f thought is to become the possession of many, not the privilege of the few, we must have done with fear. It is fear that holds men [sic] back."8Resisting the "melancholy of inner exile,"9 but not immune to possible accusations of left melancholy, understood as "a refusal to come to terms with the particular character of the present,"10 the author wrote a book that provokes music educators to actively think beyond their sealed and safe world of convictions that is based on ideology-free conceptions of music teaching. Estelle Jorgensen has long ago brought to our attention the urgency of this task: "in an era in which the mindset and political reality have changed dramatically, … there is an urgent need to revisit the political character of music education and the ways in which it needs to address the cultural issues of our day."11Along this pathway, Woodford's book encourages music educators to live and teach as public intellectuals, forging "a democratic purpose for music education"12 that acts against the "anachronistic and formalist conception of music that reduces music education to supply-side economics as children are conceived as either future professional musicians or consumers and not as citizens to be prepared in schools to participate intelligently in the political life of society."13 Woodford articulates a vision of music education "as preparation for adulthood and democratic and global citizenship."14 He strongly advocates an approach that balances performance and creativity-based experiences with a socio-historical study of the social, ideological, and cultural workings of different musics in a wide variety of contexts. He encourages music educators to teach "how music's structural properties and qualities contribute to the shaping of people's perceptions and understandings of themselves and their world,"15 "asking the who, what, when, where, how, to, with, or for whom, and, most importantly of all, why of music."16 He envisions a music classroom that exercises social criticism "directly and self-consciously"17 both through "learning how to make music"18 and through thinking about music. He sees this approach as a tool for raising students' consciousness. Woodford's ultimate vision of music education is one that casts it as a means for cultivating "a justice-oriented" approach... (shrink)

This essay by the Dutch modernist writer Menno ter Braak, ‘National Socialism as a Doctrine of Rancour’, was written in 1937 just before the German annexation of the Netherlands. It is a rare examination of how the concept ressentiment can be used to analyse 1930s National Socialism, outlining the ways in which the fascist variant of ressentiment is both distinctive and also, nonetheless, connected to its democratic and socialist versions. The essay develops Nietzsche’s and Scheler’s understandings of ressentiment by applying (...) them to fascism, insisting on the centrality of the moral sentiment of ressentiment not just to populism but to all forms of democracy, and to any philosophical or political orientation committed to an ideal of equality, indeed to all of modern society, culture and politics. (shrink)

Mainstream news broadcasting pursues an authentication project, to bolster its claims to serious, weighty and factual news reporting. News review contributes to this project when it seeks to humanize front-stage news personnel. It moves away from the traditional, institutionalized concern with `authenticity-from-above' and works to generate `authenticity-from-below'. As an extreme instance of resistance to the `from-above' formulation, this article considers data from a televised UK weekday morning show, The Big Breakfast, and specifically its `review of the papers' slot. The show's (...) orientation is iconoclastic, from the establishment perspective on news, partly by its high degree of reflexivity about the television medium. Its main presenter, Johnny Vaughan, extrapolates from newsprint sources well beyond the conventional bounds of the review genre. He delivers a thoroughly performed, burlesque response to more and less trivial aspects of the day's print news. His stylized vocal and visual representations of figures in the news achieve a populist moral consensus, as a key process in constructing a `from-below' authenticity. Even in this thoroughly tabloidized and comic performance, the show retains a clear critical dimension, strikingly at odds with authorized modes of news and news review. (shrink)