What's in a vote? Brexit beyond culture wars

Abstract

The result of the United Kingdom's EU referendum has been interpreted as evidence of a “culture war” between proponents of liberal cosmopolitanism and defenders of socially conservative values. According to this interpretation, voters on both sides are seen as driven by identity‐based politics. But on a council estate (social‐housing project) in England, what made the EU referendum different from an ordinary election was that citizens perceived it as an opportunity to reject government as they know it. Citizens’ engagements with the referendum constitute attempts to insert everyday moralities into electoral processes. They provide an opening into alternative, if yet unknown, futures that go beyond any singular narratives that divide the electorate into camps of so‐called Leavers and Remainers.

Ethnography and the Making of “The People”: Uncovering Conservative Populist Politics in the United States

“…In this case, the government becomes the “other” against which “the people” define themselves (Panizza ). Thus according to this perspective, anti‐tax and small government populism are best explained by white workers' perceived or actual loss of political power and frustration with government (Cramer ; Koch ). This perspective also includes popular arguments that the Democratic Party in the United States failed to significantly acknowledge the financial burdens of white working‐class households or to fight for the policies that would address them.…”

Keywords and key words in AE

“…The 17 most‐cited articles, each with six or more citations, include all articles from the forum on Brexit and Trump (Balthazar ; G. Evans ; Gusterson ; Knight ; I. Koch ; McGranahan ; Rosa and Bonilla ; Walley ), including the introductory article (Edwards, Haugerud, and Parikh ). The most‐cited article in this forum is Hugh Gusterson's () “From Brexit to Trump: Anthropology and the Rise of Nationalist Populism,” which takes second place with 46 citations in August 2019 (and 89 by Google Scholar's measure).…”

Made in Britain: Brexit, teacups, and the materiality of the nation

“…This feeling of detachment between my interlocutors and people in the government, the people on high money, echoes other ethnographies of the United Kingdom in which subjects experience a “deeply felt divide between the world of formal politics and that of everyday life” (Koch , 285). A focus on the daily engagements with nation in Margate will further clarify this sense of disconnection, reported by Insa Koch (), among others, and show that for many people, a vote to leave the European Union is more an issue of political representation, and the perceived lack of it, than it is about excluding migrants—even if the exclusion of migrants ends up being an outcome.…”