[lbo-talk] INSTANT POPULISM: A short history of populism old and new

[Alan Rudy]

nobody ever said it wasn't a social or political phenomena... and nobody
said it wasn't an important element of American politics... and nobody said
it wasn't worth studying.
What we said was that populist politics is not rooted in any kind of social
scientific analysis and that, as such, it can be and has stood for a wild
diversity of things across eras and within movements many of which (both
across and within) are completely incommensurable.  It tends to be little
guys we know and like = good and big guys we distrust and assume are corrupt
= bad AND it tends to appeal, in romantic fashion, to earlier more edenic
times before the big bad guys messed everything up.
As I am sure you know, many populists have rooted their positions in the
work of Adam Smith - as the agrarian populists of the 19th C did.  This
might seem to suggest that there's a social theory there but such a stance
conflates moral and economic philosophy with social science.

On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 10:49 PM, <c.berlet at publiceye.org> wrote:


>
>
> A response to the idea that populism is too vague to define and has no
> heuristic value?
>
> -Chip
>
>
> > On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 10:05 PM, <c.berlet at publiceye.org> wrote:
> >
> >> Quite a few scholars have actually produced a body of work analyzing
> >> populism, especially right-wing populism:
> >>
> >> Berlet, Chip and Matthew N. Lyons. 2000. Right-Wing Populism in America:
> >> Too Close for Comfort. New York: Guilford Press.
> >>
> >> [many more] ....snip
> >
> >
> > yes, a bunch of us have read a number of these, what is this list in
> > response to?
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >
>
>
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>

-- 
*********************************************************
Alan P. Rudy
Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work
Central Michigan University
124 Anspach Hall
Mt Pleasant, MI 48858
517-881-6319