Civilisation, Decivilisation and Nationalism
Language: English
The Trump presidency in the United States (2016-2020), the far-right populism of Bolsonaro in Brazil (2019-2023) and Milei in Argentina (2023-), Modi's 'New India' (2014-), the 'Brexit' (2016), the coming to power of far-right conservative parties and populist leaders in a growing number of European Union Member States (Hungary, Poland, Italy, the Netherlands...), the results of the last European elections (2024) confirming the general rise of the far right: all these phenomena bear witness to the revival of nationalism.
The emphasis placed by the social sciences on extremist political movements and on populism as a 'novelty' sometimes obscures the revalidation of 'good old' nationalism by politics that deny human rights and liberal democracy. This session aims at exploring the continuity between the 'moderate' nationalism observed in the past and in liberal-democratic political formations, and the 'extreme' nationalism that is (re)developing. This session rises the following question: To what extent have contemporary societies entered a process of 'de-civilisation' regarding nationalism?
Considering that individuals have to a certain extent never ceased to be socialised to the nation and to the division of the world into nations from the 19th century, the session is open to papers that 1) consider case studies; 2) use qualitative methods to investigate the intergenerational transmission of national habitus; 3) develop a theoretical approach combining the sociology of Elias and theories of nationalism and political identities.