Sociology of Global Populism (Part II)

Tuesday, 8 July 2025: 15:00-16:45
Location: SJES018 (Faculty of Legal, Economic, and Social Sciences (JES))
RC18 Political Sociology (host committee)

Language: English

Right-wing populism is one of the defining features of our political age. The current literature is dominated by a focus on what populist politicians say and not enough on how they act in the conflictual social webs of power. Thus, there is a need for sociological approaches to populism

This panel brings together sociological analyses of populism grounded in lived experiences of economic dislocations and structured social contradictions. We reject reductive views that read populism as a fleeting irrational phenomenon, treat populist attitudes as mere individual attributes, and posit populist leaders as mavericks disconnected from broader power relations. We aim to grasp populism’s roots in social contradictions.

How are experiences of precarity, exploitation, race, and gender linked to populist resonances? How do hegemonic conflicts among economic elites structure populist strategies? What roles do anti-elite resentment, nostalgia, racism, or male chauvinism play in articulating class grievances? Our aim is to analyze populism’s relationship to material inequalities, nationalism, the state-capital nexus and collective imaginaries using diverse theoretical lenses.

We examine how right-wing populist regimes instrumentalize xenophobia, culture wars, and authoritarian militarism to divide the working class while reinforcing economic hegemonies. Recognizing that political-economic forces are filtered through negotiated narratives, we analyze populism’s divergent trajectories.

Our panel is a platform for a holistic, relational analysis of populism. We invite papers that draw on a diverse range of theoretical perspectives, from Marx, Polanyi, Gramsci, Bourdieu, and Poulantzas to postcolonialism and other critical-relational approaches to illuminate the complex interplay of factors shaping populism.

Session Organizer:
Gabor SCHEIRING, Georgetown University Qatar, Qatar
Oral Presentations
Anti-Migrant Populism and Simulated Embeddedness in Eastern Europe
Attila MELEGH, Corvinus University, Hungary
Redistribute and Divide: The Narratives of Poland’s Right-Wing Populism
Agnieszka KWIATKOWSKA, Uniwersytet SWPS, Poland
Pro-Migrant Right-Wing Populism? the Case of Syrian Refugee "Crisis" in Turkey
Yağmur Ali COŞKUN, UC Berkeley, USA; Yağmur Ali COŞKUN, UC Berkeley, USA
See more of: RC18 Political Sociology
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