NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, POPULISM AND THE POLITICS OF THE LIFEWORLD

Abstract

Since the 1960s, New Social Movements (NSMs) have been prominent as new actors on the political scene. But, by comparison with other radical political agents, they have made a relatively poor showing in mainstream political theory. Habermas, for example, criticizes NSMs, including second-wave feminism, for merely masquerading as new forms of radical political agency. By introducing some ideas from Laclau, I show how to counter Habermas's criticism. I then rethink NSMs as a new post-liberal form of democratic-emancipatory political agency, which by contrast with the politics of the public sphere that Habermas champions, is anchored in the less organized reaches of the lifeworld.