States of Exception? Political Conflict, Culture & Populism in the Trump Era

Friday, August 9, 2019 in New York City

The ASA Political Sociology section is pleased to announce a mini-conference to be held prior to the ASA annual meeting in August. The morning sessions will center on populist politics, examining the rise of populist leaders and how they have transformed the political landscape, considering cases such as Donald Trump, Brexit populists Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, and Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico. The afternoon sessions will have a number of open panels, depending on submissions. We welcome papers on topics related to the historical rise of labor, political parties, gender and/or race politics, immigration issues, the media in politics, social movements, and other topics related to the current political situation. We similarly welcome papers that take a comparative and/or historical perspective, or that investigate questions in other countries going through challenging political processes.

In order for the organizers to read the abstracts and shape the sessions for the conference, please send your abstracts to us by February 1st, 2019. Please submit your abstracts to the panel organizer who fits your paper topic.

PANEL 1: “What is Trump’s base and will it hold in the long term?” Delia Baldassarri, Organizer, delia.b@nyu.edu

PANEL 2: “The Politics of Fear and Resentment: Nationalist Appeals in the Trump Era,” Bart Bonikowski, Organizer, bonikowski@fas.harvard.edu

PANEL 3: “The Trump style of populism, and how it compares to populists in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere,”Carlos de la Torre, Organizer, c.delatorre@uky.edu

PANEL 4: “Trump and the European Populists: Authoritarians, Just Showy Neo-Liberals, or Both?” Richard Lachmann, Organizer, rlachmann@albany.edu

OPEN SUBMISSIONS: The afternoon panels will be organized by the themes that emerge from the submissions. Please submit your abstracts to Thomas Janoski, Organizer, tjanos@uky.edu

Conference participants and attendees will be asked to contribute a participation fee of $25 for faculty and $15 for students to cover incidentals and a small lunch. We look forward to seeing you in New York!

The Negotiating Agreement in Congress Research Grants are aimed at scholars who seek to understand the conditions under which political negotiation can be achieved (or not achieved) in Congress and other legislative arenas. The grants provide up to $10,000 of funding for each awardee, to be used for up to one year of research and writing. Applicants must have a PhD in hand by the application deadline and must hold an affiliation with a college or university based in the United States. For more information, please visit www.ssrc.org/nacg or contact democracy@ssrc.org.

Deadline: Sept 15

Eligibility: Applicants must have a PhD in hand by the application deadline and must hold an affiliation with a college or university based in the United States. Additional criteria can be found on our website.

ISA session being organized — “Non-union class struggles from below” — Session of the ISA World Congress of Sociology, July 2018, Toronto. Organized by Marcel Paret (University of Utah and University of Johannesburg)

While many observers lament the declining significance and political power of organized labor, unions were never the only protagonists of resistance from below. Historical accounts include numerous examples of struggles by working classes and other economically marginalized groups. Similar examples of non-union resistance from below are rampant in the contemporary period of widespread economic insecurity. Groups that scholars consider to be especially “precarious” or even “surplus” to global capitalism – the unemployed, part-time and temporary workers, those eking out a living through “informal” activities, etc. – are prominent within these struggles. These struggles from below often connect economic demands to issues of citizenship, nationalism, and community.

This session will focus on class struggles from below, broadly defined but excluding struggles by capitalists and elites, that are taking place outside of formal union organizations. While maintaining emphasis on class-related demands and issues such as wages, land, and basic livelihood, relevant struggles may include significant or even dominant non-class dimensions (e.g. citizenship). Informal social networks, community-based organizations, political parties, or other non-union entities are also relevant. The goal is to highlight and contrast non-union class struggles in different parts of the globe, with attention to the influence of varying local, national, and regional contexts.

Relevant themes may include, but are not limited to:

• protests and riots by the urban poor;
• mobilization by, for, and against migrants;
• struggles by indigenous groups;
• class dimensions of nationalist movements;
• Occupy-type movements against austerity and economic inequality;
• middle class movements;
• peasant movements and/or struggles against land dispossession;
• organization by self-employed workers or independent contractors;
• political party mobilization;
• workplace resistance by non-unionized workers;
• worker centers and other community-based worker organizations.

To submit a paper to this session, please go to the following link: https://isaconf.confex.com/isaconf/wc2018/webprogrampreliminary/Session10931.html. Click the “Submit an Abstract to this Session” button to upload your submission. You will need to create an account with ISA if you do not have one already.

This session will be organized as a roundtable, and is listed in the program under “RC44 Roundtable”. Please direct any questions to Marcel Paret at marcelparet@gmail.com.