Sociology has long shied away from the problem of populism. This may be due to suspicion about the concept or uncertainty about how to fit populist cases into broader comparative matrices. Such caution is warranted: the existing interdisciplinary literature has been plagued by conceptual confusion and disagreement. But given the recent resurgence of populist politics in Latin America and elsewhere, sociology can no longer afford to sidestep such analytical challenges. This article moves toward a political sociology of populism by identifying (...) past theoretical deficiencies and proposing a new, practice-based approach that is not beholden to pejorative common sense understandings. This approach conceptualizes populism as a mode of political practice—as populist mobilization. Its utility is demonstrated through an application to mid-twentieth-century Latin American politics. The article concludes by sketching an agenda for future research on populist mobilization in Latin America and beyond. (shrink)

This book tries to argue for both of two theses that some have thought are incompatible, one negative, the other positive. To start with the negative thesis, the book opposes the 'normative turn' in political philosophy: the idea that the right approach to politics is to start from thinking abstractly about our own normative views and apply them to judging political structures, decisions, and events. Rather, the book argues, the study of politics should be focused on the historically and sociologically (...) contextualized sphere of real politics. The second, and positive thesis, is that opposition to the 'normative turn' need not mean the end of utopianism, although that utopianism needs to be re-understood. The utopian impulse is not an attempt to describe a perfect society, but an impulse to think the impossible in politics. That is, it is an attempt to articulate deep-seated desires that cannot be realized under current conditions and to imagine how structures and forms of action that now seem invariant can be changed."--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

It is a commonplace to observe that we have been living through an extraordinary pan-European and trans-Atlantic populist moment. But do the heterogeneous phenomena lumped under the rubric “populist” in fact belong together? Or is “populism” just a journalistic cliché and political epithet? In the first part of the article, I defend the use of “populism” as an analytic category and the characterization of the last few years as a “populist moment,” and I propose an account of populism as a (...) discursive and stylistic repertoire. In the second part, I specify the structural trends and the conjunctural convergence of a series of crises that jointly explain the clustering in space and time that constitutes the populist moment. The question in my title is thus twofold: it is a question about populism as a term or concept and a question about populism as a phenomenon in the world. The article addresses both the conceptual and the explanatory question, limiting the scope of the explanatory argument to the pan-European and trans-Atlantic populist conjuncture of the last few years. (shrink)

Emotion inheres simultaneously in individuals and in the social structures and relationships in which individuals are embedded. Beginning with a critical examination of T.H. Marshall's account of class resentment, this paper considers the emotional patterns of resentment in class inequality, in trade cycle changes in costs and opportunities for income, and in class cultures. Arising from social relationships, emotion is the basis of action that subsequently affects the structure of social relationships. Thus emotion connects phases of social structure separated by (...) time. (shrink)

Drawing inspiration from the works of those such as Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, the contributors address questions using a common theoretical language, and also assess the future directions of discourse theory in the social sciences.

In this hugely influential book, Laclau and Mouffe examine the workings of hegemony and contemporary social struggles, and their significance for democratic theory. With the emergence of new social and political identities, and the frequent attacks on Left theory for its essentialist underpinnings, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy remains as relevant as ever, positing a much-needed antidote against ‘Third Way’ attempts to overcome the antagonism between Left and Right.