Organizers: Manuela Caiani, Scuola Normale Superiore (collaborator of the Volkwagen Stiftung research project ‘Popular Music as a Medium for the Mainstreaming of Populist Ideology in Europe’ ); Francesca Feo, Scuola Normale Superiore; Osservatorio Internazionale per la Coesione e Inclusione Sociale (OCIS), Reggio Emilia

The last two decade have seen the marked growth of populist movements and parties across Europe, which are calling into question some of the EU’s founding principles such as pluralism, democracy, human rights, etc. Populism has been the subject of many studies, however most of them have concentrated on the political and economic dimensions of populism success, neglecting the importance of cultural and cognitive as well as emotional aspects of the phenomenon. In fact, scholars have only recently brought emotions back into the analysis of social and political movements, power relations and institutions (e.g. Goodwin, Jasper and Polletta 2001), yet populist actors and leaders mainly mobilize emotions for their success.

As has been recently pointed out, populism can be understood as ‘a performance of crisis’ (Paxton 2018). In particular, significantly, practically no studies consider the role of popular culture and music in the formation and dissemination of populist collective identities and ideologies. (Dunkel et al. 2018). Yet, music has been tied to concepts of ethnicity, nationality, (collective) identity, self-expression, spatial belonging, and authenticity – ideas that populists emphasize in their rhetoric. In addition, music has always been an effective medium for the propagation of extreme-right ideologies (e.g. neo-Nazi subcultures), as well as left wing identities.

This workshop addresses these issues, by including contributions that address the topic from an interdisciplinary perspective (political science and political sociology, together with cultural and media studies and musicology) and from a standpoint of methodological pluralism. The aim is to contribute to the debate about cultural aspects and emotions in the study of politics and populism in particular.

The workshop will be organized in three sections: The first (SESSION 1: POPULISM AND EMOTIONS) will set the overall analytical framework; the second one ((POPULIST) POLITICS AND MUSIC) will explore in more depth the relation between populism and culture(s), including music and political ‘subcultures’, with empirical evidence drawn from different case studies in Europe and beyond, both past and present. The final set of contributions (SESSION 3: SUBCULTURES, POLITICAL POWER AND SYMBOLS) will examine the relation between populist ‘cultural’ productions and practices and their communication via the media, as well as providing a critical discussion of potential future directions for ‘populism’ research.

See the full programme for more information on speakers and topics.