(Postmodern) Populism as a Trope for Contested Glocality
The chapter addresses the latest political frisson to engage students of globalization and contentious politics the world over; the specter or promise of populism. Populism affords some purchase on an axial feature of this globalized world—the imbrication
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(Postmodern) Populism as a Trope for Contested Glocality Barrie Axford
Abstract The chapter addresses the latest political frisson to engage students of globalization and contentious politics the world over; the specter or promise of populism. Populism affords some purchase on an axial feature of this globalized world—the imbrication or antithesis of local and global, of difference and sameness—and gives it an intriguing twist. My argument will be that what I call postmodern populism holds up a mirror to current politics and the present phase of globalization; and what that shows is both unedifying—since it depicts easy solutions to perceived troubles—and in some respects more palatable, because it conjures images of a less curated, popular and engaged politics, both within, and heedless of, borders.
Introduction: Provenance In what follows, I tackle a troubling facet of the current phase of the global constitution; one that offers a gloss on the tensions between secular convergence and the potential for disruption. It focuses on the ways how the assumptions framing globalization—especially “market globalization” (Steger 2015)—and knowledge about the global are being reworked under crisis conditions. The discussion is couched in terms familiar to global scholars: those of global convergence and its discontent, hybridity, syncretism (with the latter two concepts implying cultural amalgamation), and, of course, glocalization, the manner in which local and global are articulated (Roudometof 2016). For many commentators, globalization implies secular integration. But that has always been too simple a description of a non-linear and often contradictory process; one that is increasingly de-centered (Nederveen Pieterse 2018). Above all, globalization is a multidimensional process moving to different impulses that inflect economic life, culture and, of course, politics. B. Axford (B) Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 I. Rossi (ed.), Challenges of Globalization and Prospects for an Inter-civilizational World Order, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44058-9_14
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B. Axford
Here, I privilege the latest political frisson to (re)engage students of globalization and contentious politics the world over; the specter or promise of populism. Populism affords some purchase on an axial feature of this globalized world—the imbrication or antithesis of local and global, of difference and sameness—and gives it a piquant twist. While, generally, anti-globalist in its “thin” ideology (Mudde 2004, 2015; Inglehart and Norris 2016, 2017) populism is also at odds with more politically congenial manifestations of anti- or alter-globalization. This makes it an uneasy bedfellow for much resistance to neoliberal globalization, even allowing for different shades of populist thinking. My argument will be that what I call postmodern populism holds up a mirror to current politics and the present phase of globalization, and what that shows is both unedifying and palatab
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