Iran under Ahmadinejad: populism and its malcontents

This article assesses the rise of President Ahmadinejad from the perspective of the Weberian concept of charismatic authority. It argues that in re‐engaging with an authoritative structure founded on charisma, the hard line political establishment of the Islamic Republic have returned to a traditional form of autocratic power which is inherently unstable. The cycle of distress and enthusiasm from which it grows generates a momentum and ideological polarization which the leaders of the Islamic Republic may find increasingly difficult to escape.     

Anthropology and blockchain

Blockchain and its related technologies break away from the contemporary dystopian imaginaries of control and exploitation endemic in IT. This editorial considers the relevance of blockchain for anthropologists, why they should care, and what the technology brings. After sketching the evolution of blockchain, we draw attention to its potential as a playground – a plethora of projects reimagining and remaking the basic stuff of political economy, including the meaning of money, collectivities, exchange and voting. Blockchain's utility for rethinking the basic rules of the game in academia also deserves attention.     

Connections between populism and nationalism: Evidence from Jair Bolsonaro's speeches

Recent studies have warned about the close relationship between populism and nationalism. This article offers an empirical contribution to the examination of this relationship by analysing the presence of populist and nationalist elements in the official speeches of the outgoing Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. We make two contributions to this expanding literature. First, we show that the supposed ambiguity between populism and nationalism can be resolved by an approach that clearly separates the two concepts. Second, we find that Bolsonaro is more populist than nationalist. His populism has elements in common with other European populist leaders (attacking political parties and the political class), but he distances himself from them by presenting authoritarian traits. Nativism is completely absent (unlike in Europe), but ‘sovereignism’ (‘us’ vs. ‘other nations or institutions’) and ‘civilisationism’ (‘us’ vs. ‘minorities’) sometimes overlap with populism. We conclude that a tension exists between populism and nationalism that can endanger the ‘good’ relationship between the populist leader and their supporters. This is something that future research on populism should consider.     

Ethnic and Islamist populism in Turkey and its impact on Kurdish nationalism

Rather than addressing the Kurdish conflict in Turkey directly, this study focuses on how the rising nationalist populism bears on Kurdish voters supporting the pro-Kurdish party HDP. There are very few studies on how Kurds are affected by the nationalist populism often expressed in Turkey by the governing People's Alliance (Cumhur İttifakı) with its slogan “domestic and national,” even though the literature offers a broad variety of studies on the Kurdish conflict. To fill this gap, this study is supported by focus group discussions with the Kurds in Turkey who support the HDP, based on a sample of the Kurds living in Istanbul, which is sometimes referred to as the “largest Kurdish city.” This study claims that the populist slogan of the “domestic and national” not only marginalises the Kurdish interviewees but also weakens their sense of belonging to Turkey, thus encouraging them to establish their own national identities. An important result of the focus group meetings is that AKP's polarising policy not only causes polarisation among Turks but also among the Kurds.     

Astroturf and populism in Australia: The Convoy of No Confidence

The ‘Convoy of No Confidence’ was a trucking convoy that converged on Canberra in 2011 in a failed attempt to force the Gillard Labor government to an early election. At the time, there was widespread speculation that it was an ‘astroturf’ or synthetic grassroots movement. This article assesses the extent to which this alleged astroturf event exhibited populist elements, measured against Taggart's definition of populism. Unlike most Australian populist movements, which have been hostile towards all major parties (or all the big banks), the convoy's participants directed their anger almost entirely towards the Gillard government. In this, they were joined by Coalition politicians and right-wing media. The article finds that such one-sidedness is insufficient to characterise the convoy definitively as an Astroturf group, and therefore not genuinely populist. It also suggests that there may be a continuum between populist and astroturf movements.

“不信任游”是2011年坎贝拉的一次失败的卡车游行,意在迫使吉拉德工党政府提前大选。这是一个“人工草皮”或合成的草根运动。本文根据泰格特的民粹主义定义,探讨了这次所谓草根运动到底包含多少民粹因素。与仇视所有主要政党的大多数澳大利亚民粹主义运动不一样,这次游行的参与者把愤怒完全投向吉拉德政府。因此,他们得到了联盟政治家以及右翼媒体的联手。作者发现,由于这种单面性,该运动算不上草根群体,并非真正的民粹主义。作者认为,在民粹与人工草根运动之间存在着一个量变的连续体。     

Compulsory voting and right-wing populism: mobilisation,representation and socioeconomic inequalities

ABSTRACT

When all citizens vote, the influence of radical parties decreases. Despite this being a central justification for compulsory voting in the past, it has been absent from contemporary debates. I examine the normative and empirical premises of the ‘moderation thesis’ in relation to radical right-wing populist parties today and suggest that, under certain conditions, compulsory voting can limit these parties’ appeal. First, it replaces the excessive mobilisation of discontented voters with a more universal mobilisation. Second, it addresses the problem of underrepresentation offering a more pluralist type of representation than the populist one. And third, it reverses socioeconomic inequalities that drive support for populism through the egalitarian effects that compulsory voting has on policymaking. My central thesis is this: because compulsory voting embodies inclusivist, pluralist and egalitarian values, it addresses some of the grievances that drive support for right-wing populist parties without carrying the same normative costs as populism.     

Pop Anthropology,With Little Anthropology or Pop

Unlike other scientific fields, anthropology popularizations are as likely as not to be written by scientists who are not themselves experts in the subject. This is because the subject, the scientific knowledge of our origin and patterns of bio-cultural diversity—or more broadly, who we are and where we come from—is the source of our culturally authoritative origin myths, and consequently of broad general interest in and of itself. But anthropology popularizations come with the responsibility not only to get the facts and theory correct, but as well to understand the history and embedded politics in the stories themselves.     

Propositions on right-wing populism: Available,excessive, optimistic

Every discourse on right-wing populism is, more or less explicitly, a discourse on affect. From claims that right-wing populism emerges from a background of racialized resentment or the anger of the ‘left behind’, through to analyses of how populist politicians mobilized hatred and rage in a ‘post-truth era’, attempts to explain the emergence and electoral success of contemporary right-wing populism have centered affect. In the midst of the turbulence of post 2007 financial crisis politics, the discourse on right-wing populism has repeated the tensions and ambivalences that surround affective politics per se – with populism simultaneously serving as a warning of what an affect-based politics might become, whilst also seeming to offer a lesson for the liberal-left in how to mobilize and move people otherwise disaffected. In this paper we supplement this attention to affect, and step outside of this tensed relation, by articulating the structure of feeling of contemporary right-wing populism in the U.S.A and UK. We do so through the form of the proposition, finding in the proposition a style of inhabiting an impasse that (re/dis)orientates attention and opens up disagreement and further discussion. In the first proposition - populism is available – we explore questions of definition, settling on how the discursive emptiness of populism allows for its constant articulation. Populism is excessive – the second proposition – shifts to emphasizing the affective fullness of populism, following how this fullness plays out in registers such as fun. Our third proposition – populism is optimistic – argues that right-wing populism is dependent on a ‘temporal loop’ optimism where the future to come blurs with the past that was. We conclude with some reflections on the future of this affect structure in light of the January 2021 events in the US Capitol and the electoral defeat of Donald J Trump.     

Anthropology and the New Museology

Efforts are expanding to make museums responsive to broader audiences, and to incorporate a more multi-voiced approach to representation. Anthropologists and museum professionals point to initiatives in museums to broaden their research and outreach, but there is work still to be done. Whether we focus on theory or methodology, the new museology represents a particularly anthropological approach to museum work, emphasizing collaboration between museums and communities, and the recognition of the rights of peoples to be included in and consulted about the presentation and preservation of their heritage.     

Anthropology and working class life

W. H. Form. Blue Collar Stratification: Auto Workers in Four Countries. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976. i‐xx + 335 pp. Figures, tables, bibliography, and index. $17.00.

J. D. Edelstein and M. Warner. Comparative Union Democracy: Organization and Opposition in British and American Labor Unions. London: George Allen, Unwin, Ltd. 1976. i‐ix + 378 pp. Tables, bibliography, and index. $19.95.

L. B. Rubin. Worlds of Pain: Life in the Working Class Family. New York: Basic Books, 1976. i‐xiii +268 pp. Bibliography, and index. $11.95.     

The People's Climate March: Environmental populism as political genre

Contemporary political ecological research on populism has demonstrated how authoritarian and strongarm tactics come to be hitched to reductive symbolic representations of “the people,” often with disastrous environmental impacts. Advocates of “left-populism” argue that such research can give the erroneous impression that “populism” and “authoritarianism” are essentially synonymous. Skeptical of formalist arguments, Gramscians argue that populism, as a quite variegated and fundamentally spatial phenomenon, must be viewed historically, in situ. But all three arguments share a quick assessment of populism, without always attending to its embedded multiplicity. Bringing together insights from Stuart Hall and Lauren Berlant, this article seeks to expand geographical understandings of the dynamic forms and styles of environmental politics by proposing thinking of populism as a political genre. This theoretical schema helps to cut through formalist versus historicist debates while directing attention to the affective scenes through which populism is performed. In order to demonstrate the utility of examining populism's genre and scenes, I examine political essays written surrounding the 2014 People’s Climate March. Essays debated activist expectations concerning political subjectivity, tactics, scales of action, signifiers, and aesthetics for best confronting global inequality and the climate crisis alike. Through contesting the meaning of “the people” and “populism,” divergent leftist political interpretations both repeated and tweaked generic populist forms. By examining the performative construction and contestation of “the people” through languages and spaces of climate action, I advocate a humble yet still critical political ecological approach to understanding contemporary populism.     

When nationalism beats populism: The secessionist movement in Texas

Six members of the Republican Party have presented and supported a House Bill in the Texas House of Representatives proposing a referendum to decide whether Texas should leave the United States. This initiative has been seen as a success by the Texas Nationalist Movement, who has been advocating for Texit for years. Applying frame analysis on an extended corpus of Texas nationalist sympathisers' statements, this article empirically explores the discourse of the Texas Nationalist Movement. The analysis contributes to recent literature on new nationalist movements and shows that Texas nationalism articulates its discourse around a homogeneous and exclusionary national conception based on the need to achieve independence as a solution to the country's problems.