Browsing by Subject "populism"
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Item Extracting Identities and Value from Nature: Power, Culture, and Knowledge in the Contested Politics of Mining(2018-07) Kojola, ErikGlobal capitalism’s accelerating consumption of natural resources and new technologies are driving development of new riskier forms and sites of extraction. These developments create conflicts around socio-ecological hazards and perceived trade-offs between economic growth and environmental protection. I take proposed copper-nickel mines in Northern Minnesota as an illustrative case study of the contentious politics that arise around ecological risks, environmental governance and land-use decisions. Northern Minnesota is an emblematic case of the tensions around resource use in a rural mining region, but also has a distinct history of progressive politics and militant unionism, American Indian sovereignty, and ethos of environmentalism. I examine how class and place-based identities and collective memories inform how people make sense of environmental hazards and construct different visions for the future. I investigate how social actors (unions, mining companies, environmentalists, American India Tribes and local politicians) legitimize their positions, create competing truth claims, and engage in environmental decision-making. I situate these discourses and actions within the particular socio-ecological histories of Northern Minnesota and broader relations of power and political-economic and ideological processes. I contribute to environmental and natural resource sociology by integrating interdisciplinary theories of political ecology to address the interconnections between class, race, and indigeneity in environmental governance.Item Fact, Fiction, or Fragile: The Globalization and Populism Hypothesis(2023) Eichinger, AphisithA dominant claim in political science is that globalization in advanced democracies is the culprit for the rise in populism and far right nationalism. The hypothesis has been tested dozens of times in economics and political science and with the many rigorous methodological approaches. But as advanced as the models are there are plenty that do not account for issues like worker selection into trade-exposed industries or exogenous political environments like the terrorism atmosphere of the 2010s and the creeping threat of Russia into Eastern Europe. Moreover, many of the studies confuse core concepts like populism and far right nationalism, which usually interferes with how the primary dependent variable is measured in empirical studies. I take these issues in mind and design a series of research papers that alternatively test the globalization and populism hypothesis. I study (1) voting just before and after the global financial crisis of 2008 when there was no threat of terrorism or Russian aggression, (2) decentralization and populism after 2008 but before 2013, and (3) populism, nationalism, and immigration preferences after defining “populism” in a more suitable fashion. I find overwhelmingly that globalization and populism have a fragile relationship at best and a fictional relationship at worst.Item Imperial Daydreaming: Disentangling Contemporary Ottoman Nostalgia in Turkey(2020-05) Karakaya, YagmurThis dissertation investigates Ottoman nostalgia in Turkey, a dynamic process observed in two forms: State-sponsored populist neo-Ottomanism exemplified in rallies and museums, and the Ottomania—the popular cultural fascination with the Ottoman past—observed in leisure activities. Turkey’s early-twentieth-century foundational premise was the dramatic rejection of the Ottoman past, best signaled by the abolishment of the Arabic script and banning religious garb in State institutions. Today this regime has been replaced by that of the authoritarian populist Justice and Development Party, or AKP. Where the early Republican regime attempted to root Turkey’s origins in ethnicity rather than religion, the AKP mines Ottoman history and symbolism as a central source of legitimacy. To unpack the ways Ottoman nostalgia is produced, mobilized and contested, I employ a multi-method qualitative research design: 1) Ethnographic fieldwork in the Panorama History Museum of Conquest in Istanbul, and the Commemoration of the Conquest, both powerful sites of state-led neo-Ottomanism. 2) Textual analysis of the popular television show Magnificent Century, the best-known vehicle of the popular cultural Ottomanian fever, and its state-produced counterpart Resurrection Ertugrul, and 3) Interviews in six diverse cities, exploring how ordinary people make sense of both state-led and popular manifestations. Rather than focusing on one level – state, society, or popular culture, this project brings together state-led endeavors, popular culture, and their audience reception. This highlights the interactions among them, and shows how political efforts are contested and how different groups ‘buy in’ to these to different degrees. I found that that the bombastic spectacles of the AKP may have sacralized the Ottoman past, but their claims to a second Muslim “re-conquest” have pushed a segment of the population in Turkey to question the “emotional manipulation” of politicians “exploiting” this holy past. In line with this, people who were followers of lighthearted Ottomania chose to move away from Ottoman nostalgia altogether. I argue that neo-Ottomanism has coopted Ottomania, a potential, light-hearted cosmopolitan engagement with the Ottoman past, and made it “his,” by hardening its fluid boundaries into rigid heteronormative, and overly self-assured categories.Item The People versus the Pipelines: Energy infrastructure and liberal ideology in North American environmentalism(2018-06) Bosworth, KaiContestation of the Keystone XL and the Dakota Access pipelines gathered in resistance a coalition of progressives, farmers and ranchers, environmentalists, and Native Nations. While these groups appear united in opposition to the pipeline, the principles and strategies of the grassroots at stake in this emergent environmental movement have been more heavily contested than recognized by existing literatures. While long-standing rifts certainly still exist between mainstream liberal environmental organizations and radical movements for environmental justice, I argue that the ideological field of contemporary environmentalism cannot be understood without taking into account the emergence of environmental populism. Populism is the ideology and political formation that takes “the people” as the principle and proper political actor. A mass movement of the people is positioned in opposition to corporations, corrupt institutions, and elites, all of whom trample upon their rights to participate and decide environmental futures. How does pipeline populism, as a collective social phenomenon, emerge from and transform contemporary ideologies of environmental politics? What consequences does it have for the political nexus of global climate chaos, racial capitalism, and ongoing settler colonialism? If we are right to think that only through people’s movements can we adequately and democratically address global climate change, scholars and activists alike must understand the underlying tensions in the desires and ideologies of what is meant to be “the people’s climate movement.” The People versus the Pipelines: Energy Infrastructure and Grassroots Ideology in North American Environmentalism addresses these questions by examining the internal tensions within populist ideologies in the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Iowa. Intervening in interdisciplinary environmental scholarship and political theories concerning the relationships among ideology and desire in populist politics, this project develops a conceptual and methodological framework that understands environmental populism as emerging from resentment towards dispossession, democratic public participation, and expert knowledges. Through interviews, participant observation, and cultural and media analysis, I demonstrate how environmentalist practices are shifting from appeals to state institutions toward a movement of the people. I argue that while environmental populism attempts to take leave of elitism, its aspirations to ground property, democracy, and expertise emerge from liberal affective infrastructures and congeal into a political activism that can reproduce Euro-American, settler colonial, and nationalist tropes. This research intervenes in interdisciplinary debates in environmental studies, political ecology, and political theory by questioning the role of environmentalism in sustaining a politics of exclusion through a left-populist ideology. I take up the complex problem of race and legacies of colonialism in movements against fossil fuels to demonstrate the sustained manner in which confronting structures of oppression elides liberal social justice movements. In making this argument, I show that the persistence of race and settler colonialism is not merely an effect of culture, history, or the state, but is also embedded in the liberal structures of contestation frequently upheld by political ecologists, including public participation, landed private property, and local and regional grassroots political formations. This research has implications for scholars and activists interested in contemporary environmental and climate justice, for political theories and public discourse on populism, and for those concerned with the intersection of race and settler colonialism in environmental politics.