Populism, Democracy, and the Humanities

Interdisciplinary Explorations and Critical Enquiries

Iulian Cananau, Peder Thalén

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
• Year: 2022
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9798881857530
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The contributors to this volume reflect on the phenomenon and concept of populism in relation to democracy and the humanities from the vantage points of various disciplinary backgrounds: philosophy, history of ideas, media and communication, journalism, political science, gender studies, organization science, education theory, popular culture, and literary studies. While the study of populism seems to have become a subfield within political science, this topic has been rarely explored by scholars in the humanities. Rather than contribute to the already established area of populism studies in social and political sciences, our authors take a more open and exploratory stance through which they attempt to open up new fields and directions for inquiry from an interdisciplinary humanistic perspective.
Struggling with problems of relevance, impact, and visibility, the humanities have a special responsibility to address this topic, not only because it is relevant for their multidisciplinary scope, but also because the humanities stand for the values of thoughtfulness, in-depth reflection, critical thinking, weighty and thorough analysis. The humanities' very existence constitutes a guaranty against what is often described as populism.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I: Populism and the Democratic Culture
• Chapter 1: Populism: A Bird’s-Eye View of the Concept in Political Science
• Chapter 2: The Lost Art of Democratic Debate: Econocracy, Populism and the Humanities
• Chapter 3: Is Another World Possible?: Totalitarian Thinking and Individuality in George Orwell
• Part II: Populism and Social Change
• Chapter 4: Educational Desires and ‘Numbers’ as a Salvation Theme: Historicising the Reasoning of Education
• Chapter 5: Alternative Images of the University in an Era of Higher Education as Politicised Social Good
• Chapter 6: Masculinity in the Populist Manichean Mindset
• Part III: The New Media and Populist Communication
• Chapter 7: The Digital Communication Logic and Political Populism
• Chapter 8: Populism and the Politics of the Media Spectacle in the United States: The Imagery of the U.S.-Mexico Border
• Part IV: Populism and the Public Imagination
• Chapter 9: The Case of the Lost Sobriety: TV Documentaries and Society in Sweden in the Twenty-First Century
• Chapter 10: Fictionalisations of American Populism: From Edward Bellamy’s Utopia to Angie Thomas’s Black Lives Matter Novel
• Index
• About the Contributors