SoSe 2023

Until recently, there has been no consensus regarding the populist Zeitgeist in contemporary civil societies. Its nature, performative structures, and influence on democracy are widely disputed in academic and public discourse. Despite conceptual disagreements, scholars, however, more or less settle on populism's polarizing character and its effect of fueling concern that civic solidarity is disintegrating and contemporary democracy is merely an imitation aimed to support elites’ private interests. This seminar attempts to provide answers to the populist symbolic influence in contemporary civil societies. Specifically, the civil sphere concept developed in the cu tural-sociological civil sphere theory (CST) suggests a new promising perspective on the polarizing character of populism and its influence on societies' discursive and institutional structures. The first session is devoted to discussing previous theories of civil society and new uptakes of the CST. The second session describes the analysis of the symbolic activity of the populist continuum from the political left to the right in the civil sphere. The last session is dedicated to students' presentations of the country-specific research on populism in the civil sphere and its discussion in the framework of a conference.