Abstract
Right-wing populism has strongly polarizing effects in politics, education and science—a problem which this article aims to adress. Instead of claiming a demarcation between science and education on the one hand and right-wing populist ideology on the other, we initially focus on continuities. At the same time, we are concerned with finding a critical distance towards right-wing populism. Using the theoretical framework of boundary-work we therefore analyse a case of right-wing populist educational and scientific efforts. Boundary-work can occur in an institutional, content-related and epistemic dimension. While we identify strong continuities in the institutional and content-related dimensions, we see the main difference in the epistemic dimension. In conclusion, we use the results of our analysis to develop a critical position as scientists and educationists towards right-wing populism, drawing consequences for the epistemic, content-related and institutional dimensions.
Highlights
Right-wing populism has strongly polarizing effects in politics, education and science—a problem which this article aims to adress
In the third and concluding part we develop a critical position towards right-wing populism that is primarily based on our scientific and educational assumptions and focusses on our own practices
To build a bridge from the political theory of right-wing populism towards the field of science studies, we introduce three analytical dimensions postulated by Jan-Werner Müller (2017)
Summary
Right-wing populists polarize in public debates through their own statements. Instead of hastily drawn boundaries which suggest that the central difference to right-wing populism is a political difference, we want to open the perspective towards more complex boundary-work that allows to take a critical position from the perspective of Bildung and science.3 To put it very clearly: since right-wing populist ways of thought and belief are booming and we—scientists and educationists in higher and adult education—are not immunized either, we consider it necessary to actively work on a critical positioning (see Rödel (2020) who currently asks how a metapoliticization of the field of adult education can be countered). In the third and concluding part we develop a critical position towards right-wing populism that is primarily based on our scientific and educational assumptions and focusses on our own practices
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