The workshop focuses on crisis discourses and ethno-populist mobilization in a comparative perspective. In contrast to the fashionable approaches which start from a definition and then seek to analyze particular manifestations, we hold it more fruitful to bring together a number of research traditions and regional competences to a dialogue, hoping to generate a more context-sensitive understanding of the phenomenon. Particularly interesting in this sense is comparing the East Central European, Western European and non-European cases, as well as the dialogue of intellectual history, social history, political science, and legal perspectives. Using these approaches as vantage points for a multi-dimensional analysis, we seek to focus on three aspects in particular: 1) perceptions and symptoms of socio-economic and cultural crisis triggering populist responses; 2) modalities of populist mobilization, social networks, symbols, rhetoric, narratives of identity; and 3) populists in government, policies and (para)legal frameworks, similarities with pasts configurations of authoritarianism, and also the question of resistance to these regimes.
Organized by Pasts, Inc. Center for Historical Studies at CEU, the seminar is intended as a starting point of a lasting international cooperation on the topic. Along these lines, the format of the seminar is also intended to enhance intensive dialogue, with short position papers and then a discussion on the panel and also with the audience.