Cultural Populism

First Published in 2004. This book provides a novel understanding of current thought and enquiry in the study of popular culture and communications media. The populist sentiments and impulses underlying cultural studies and its postmodernist variants are explored and criticized sympathetically. An exclusively consumptionist trend of analysis is identified and shown to be an unsatisfactory means of accounting for the complex material conditions and mediations that shape ordinary people’s pleasures and opportunities for personal and political expression. Through detailed consideration of the work of Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall and ‘the Birmingham School’, John Fiske, youth subcultural analysis, popular television study, and issues generally concerned with public communication (including advertising, arts and broadcasting policies, children’s television, tabloid journalism, feminism and pornography, the Rushdie affair, and the collapse of communism), Jim McGuigan sets out a distinctive case for recovering critical analysis of popular culture in a rapidly changing, conflict-ridden world. The book is an accessible introduction to past and present debates for undergraduate students, and it poses some challenging theses for postgraduate students, researchers and lecturers.

Authoritarian populist parties have advanced in many countries, and entered government in states as diverse as Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Switzerland. Even small parties can still shift the policy agenda, as demonstrated by UKIP's role in catalyzing Brexit. Drawing on new evidence, this book advances a general theory why the silent revolution in values triggered a backlash fuelling support for authoritarian-populist parties and leaders in the US and Europe. The conclusion highlights the dangers of this development and what could be done to mitigate the risks to liberal democracy.

The ideologies and practices of various populist movements are centered on issues of gender, especially idealized notions of masculinity. Offering cultural, political, and historical approaches from a range of interdisciplinary and international perspectives, The Culture and Politics of Populist Masculinities analyzes articulations and performances that link populism to masculinity. In particular, the collection studies political participation in the form of public debates, media, and popular culture. The authors emphasize that in order to understand what can be defined as populism, we need to look at the culture that it inhabits and the efforts to claim, challenge, and reclaim the popular. Writing from a wide range of international contexts, the contributors to The Culture and Politics of Populist Masculinities explore how populist masculinities are articulated and performed, whether there is something problematic about a specifically masculine populism, and whether there is hope for a pluralist, inclusive, even progressive form of masculine populism. Culture and Politics of Populist Masculinities’ international range of contributors explore how populist masculinities are articulated and performed, whether there is something problematic about a specifically masculine populism, and whether there is hope for a pluralist, inclusive, even progressive form of masculine populism.

This book examines and establishes the sociological relevance of the concept of populism and illuminates the ideological use of sport, leisure, and popular culture in socio-political populist strategies and dynamics. The first part of the book — Themes, Concepts, Theories — sets the scene by reviewing and evaluating populist themes, concepts, and theories and exploring their cultural-historical roots in and application to cultural forms such as mega-sports events, reality television programmes, and the popular music festival. The second part — National Contexts and Settings — examines populist elements of events and regimes in selected cases in South America and Europe: Argentina, Brazil, Greece, Italy, and England. In the third part — Trump Times — the place of sport in the populist ideology and practices of US president Donald Trump is critically examined in analyses of Trump’s authoritarian populism, his Twitter discourse, Lady Gaga at the Super Bowl, and populist strategy on the international stage. The book concludes with a discussion of the strong case for a fuller sociological engagement with the populist dimensions of sport, leisure, and popular cultural forms. Written in a clear and accessible style, this volume will be of interest to sociologists and social scientists beyond those specialising in popular culture and cultural politics of sport and leisure, as the topic of populism and its connection to popular cultural forms and practices has come increasingly into prominence in the contemporary world.

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book examines the role of the cultural factor, and patterns of its interaction with social, economic and political developments, in fostering identity-based new populisms and various forms of political authoritarianism across the globe. Comparing authoritarianism in the Asian and Western context, this book attempts to shed light on the different ways in which new political actors make use of cultural traditions or constructs in order to justify their claims to power and challenge the culture of modernity as understood in the Western world. Lastly, the book focuses on the consequence of these new challenges for multilateral cooperation at regional and global levels, asking the question: is the world going towards fragmentation and anarchy or a pluralist and innovative form of multilateral cooperation? This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of populism and authoritarianism studies, democracy, global governance and more broadly to international relations.

The rapid global spread of populism has become an arresting and often disturbing phenomenon in the opening decades of the twenty-first century. This collection of essays explores the complex histories and diverse geographies of populist activity, examining its manifestations on both the political left and the right while tracing its dangerous association with nativism, racism and xenophobia. Established socio-political theories are questioned and challenged, giving way to fresh philosophical or cultural perspectives. At the heart of this collection lies a concern with the capacity of the humanities – and especially literary studies – to interpret, evaluate and intervene in this populist moment. Literary discussion ranges from Henry James and William Faulkner to Toni Morrison, David Foster Wallace, Ali Smith and Ta-Nehisi Coates. These essays demonstrate the pertinence and value of enquiries from multiple perspectives if we are to come to terms with the impact of populist rhetoric on meaning and truth, as proliferating misinformation unmoors conceptual and ethical coherence. The chapters in this book were originally published in Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies and English Studies in Africa.

Populism is a central concept in the current media debates about politics and elections. However, like most political buzzwords, the term often floats from one meaning to another, and both social scientists and journalists use it to denote diverse phenomena. What is populism really? Who are the populist leaders? And what is the relationship between populism and democracy? This book answers these questions in a simple and persuasive way, offering a swift guide to populism in theory and practice. Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser present populism as an ideology that divides society into two antagonistic camps, the "pure people" versus the "corrupt elite," and that privileges the general will of the people above all else. They illustrate the practical power of this ideology through a survey of representative populist movements of the modern era: European right-wing parties, left-wing presidents in Latin America, and the Tea Party movement in the United States. The authors delve into the ambivalent personalities of charismatic populist leaders such as Juan Domingo Péron, H. Ross Perot, Jean-Marie le Pen, Silvio Berlusconi, and Hugo Chávez. If the strong male leader embodies the mainstream form of populism, many resolute women, such as Eva Péron, Pauline Hanson, and Sarah Palin, have also succeeded in building a populist status, often by exploiting gendered notions of society. Although populism is ultimately part of democracy, populist movements constitute an increasing challenge to democratic politics. Comparing political trends across different countries, this compelling book debates what the long-term consequences of this challenge could be, as it turns the spotlight on the bewildering effect of populism on today's political and social life.

This book is a critical introduction of theorisations and research on contemporary political populism emphasising the cultural perspective. It introduces the basic theories and analyses the cultural construction of populism regarding radical democratic theory and empirical studies. Applying Ernesto Laclau’s and Chantal Mouffe’s theories, the author builds a bridge between radical democratic and ideational approaches on populism with examples and studies that emphasise European radical right populism, alongside the United States, Latin American and Asian cases. Special attention is paid to relationships between populism and democracy and between populism and media. The contemporary appeal of populism is linked to current developments in welfare states and in global economic and cultural trends. The future of populism is discussed in regard to COVID-19 pandemic and Donald Trump’s fall in the US presidential elections in 2020 that together with abovementioned global megatrends and with the development of media and communication environment set conditions for the 2020s populism. Scholars and students of political science, media and communication studies, cultural studies and social sciences will find this a unique and novel approach.

A crucial new guide to one of the most important and most dangerous phenomena of our time: the rise of populism in the West Across the West, there is a rising tide of people who feel excluded, alienated from mainstream politics, and increasingly hostile towards minorities, immigrants and neo-liberal economics. Many of these voters are turning to national populist movements, which pose the most serious threat to the Western liberal democratic system, and its values, since the Second World War. From the United States to France, Austria to the UK, the national populist challenge to mainstream politics is all around us. But what is behind this exclusionary turn? Who supports these movements and why? What does their rise tell us about the health of liberal democratic politics in the West? And what, if anything, should we do to respond to these challenges? Written by two of the foremost experts on fascism and the rise of the populist right, National Populism is a lucid and deeply-researched guide to the radical transformations of today's political landscape, revealing why liberal democracies across the West are being challenged-and what those who support them can do to help stem the tide.