Conservative populist politics and the remaking of the “white working class” in the USA

Pied, Claudine

doi:10.1007/s10624-018-9501-1

Cited by 6 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Notably, in a region where frontier mythology and the figure of the rugged individual loom large, the so-called golden era is understood as a time when not only the individual engineer, but also the public water agency that employed him 2 enjoyed more resources and popular esteem. As such, while these articulations resonate in some ways with the accounts of United States history that dominated right-wing political rhetoric on the national stage throughout the 2010s (Goldstein and Hall, 2017; Morton, 2018; Pied, 2018), they are deployed here to praise a substantively different set of socio-political relations from the ones championed in those contexts. Attending to the disillusionment and nostalgia of these engineers, I argue, reveals how understandings of individual and institutional power are conditioned by past paradigms of regional development and technocratic statecraft – and the centrality of these formations for delineating how power relations evolve over time.…”

mentioning

confidence: 84%

Missing power: Nostalgia and disillusionment among Southern California water engineers

Randle¹

2021

Critique of Anthropology

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California’s sprawling network of aqueducts and dams is often cited as the embodiment of a high-modernist approach to resource management. But while once widely celebrated, in recent decades this infrastructural system and the institutions that manage it have been the subject of growing criticism and shrinking funding streams. Based on ethnographic research among employees at several California water agencies, this article explores the sense of nostalgia and diminished power experienced by the workers tasked with overseeing these networks. These emic perspectives are frequently articulated in the form of unfavorable comparisons to an imagined past, when the workers believe that their agencies were better resourced and civil engineers’ technical expertise was more respected by the public that they served. Analyzing these stories of declining influence and capacity, the article shows how understandings of individual and institutional power can be conditioned by past paradigms of regional development and technocratic statecraft.

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confidence: 84%

Missing power: Nostalgia and disillusionment among Southern California water engineers

Randle¹

2021

Critique of Anthropology

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“…According to Pied (2018), conservative populist politics have imposed the discursive process of otherness, by using race in the narrative of "us" and "them" to remake the "white working class." (p.195) Pied's study focused on how conservative populist politics have capitalized on political cynicism, which is predominantly found among white low-wage and unemployed small-town residents.…”

Section: Populism As Identitymentioning

confidence: 99%

A Plan for the People - A critical discourse analysis of the campaign platform and victory speech of Premier Doug Ford (2018-2019)

Zambito¹

2022

Preprint

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The recent success of populist politicians in liberal democracies has influenced scholars in the field of political communications to define and categorize populism. The term “populism” has become recognized as a matter of concern when debating the future stability of democracy. It has been used to explain unprecedented wins in recent politics, such as Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 United States Presidential Election. (Lahiti, 2018) It has also been associated with various socio-political and cultural changes over the past decades, more recently, the 2015 Syrian Refugee Crisis. (Abdalla, 2017) Populism is recognized as elusive, episodic, and relatively versatile in liberal democracies. (Mudde, 2004) This proposes the question of how has populist rhetoric become so effective in contemporary politics? According to Mudde (2004), populism is a thin-centered ideology that, "considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people' versus ‘the corrupt elite,' and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people.” (p.543) This definition is interpreted that within society, there are two distinct groups that coexist, ‘the people' and ‘the elite.' Mudde’s definition of populism will be used in this research, as the division of two homogeneous and antagonistic groups is prevalent in the case of Ontario. Moreover, as it will be discussed further in this research, the process of identifying who ‘the people' and ‘the elite’ are is central to creating divisive groups in Ontario.

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“…Similar to that of other contemporary right-wing populist leaders, Trump's rhetoric hinges on an exclusionary and nationalist “origin myth” (Fletcher, 2016). Though there is value in identifying patterns in the appeal of this to “rural white America,” we should not overlook the significance of regional and historical distinctions ( Pied, 2018 ). In the San Joaquin Valley, we can say that anti-immigrant populism revitalizes California's own “origin myth” and elemental tenets of class and rurality ( McWilliams, 1939 ; Santos-Gomez, 2013 ; Hernández Romero, 2012 ).…”

Section: “The People” Minus Some People: Racial Agrarian Capitalism Imentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While illuminating critical aspects of why rural people and places matter, the focus on conservatism has obscured progressive rural trends that have developed simultaneously. Moreover, rendering US rurality a white space risks casting historically disenfranchised groups, especially those predominated by “undocumented” status, beyond purview of rural politics ( Pied, 2018 ). This issue has particular resonance in California, where about one-third of roughly 2.4 million US-based farmworkers work and live ( Branch and Lipton, 2018 ; Thompson, 2017 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Remaking “the people”: Immigrant farmworkers, environmental justice and the rise of environmental populism in California's San Joaquin Valley

Chandrasekaran

2021

Journal of Rural Studies

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Highlights Political disenfranchisement and racism form the bedrock of rural California geography. Environmental justice organizing has built a progressive base in the San Joaquin Valley. Control over local governance can scale up and strengthen environmental justice. Opposing populisms in Kern County, CA are situated distinctly in neoliberal crisis. Resistance to farmworker disposability is being expressed in environmental terms.

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Conservative populist politics and the remaking of the “white working class” in the USA

Cited by 6 publications

References 34 publications

Missing power: Nostalgia and disillusionment among Southern California water engineers

Missing power: Nostalgia and disillusionment among Southern California water engineers

A Plan for the People - A critical discourse analysis of the campaign platform and victory speech of Premier Doug Ford (2018-2019)

Remaking “the people”: Immigrant farmworkers, environmental justice and the rise of environmental populism in California's San Joaquin Valley

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