Pierre Bourdieu and Populism:

Abstract

Copyright © 2012 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA A quick snapshot of populist politics in twenty-first century America reveals an off-beat cast: Christian fundamentalists, vigilante border patrollers, the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Barack Obama, broad-based community organizers, grassroots ecopopulists, Occupy Wall Street, the advertising duo of John Mellencamp and Chevrolet, and a supporting cast too long to credit. Populist politics has always attracted this cacophony of voices and styles of expression. Yet, scholars debating the future of democracy are often quick to assign populism a fixed refrain. At stake are competing responses to a nagging question: Can populism in the age of neoliberalism be more than an easily assimilable, or worse, reactionary, form of protest politics, offering the fantasy of popular control in times of increasing vulnerability and disempowerment? For many scholars on the left, the answer depends on whether activists can wrest populism’s rebellious energies from the right, and invent savvier, more resilient forms of oppositional politics.1 According to those who sing this tune, populism’s strength is its combative rhetoric, which mobilizes the demands of the people against the abuses and failures of established democratic orders. Such energetic critique is crucial, they argue, to mount resistance against the relentless drive of global capitalism, and its tightening grip on the economy, culture, and politics. A second chorus of scholars and activists insist that populist politics is most effective when it turns down its bullhorn of resistance. In their view, Pierre Bourdieu and Populism: The Everyday Politics of Outrageous Resistance