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- Convenors:
-
Natalie Morningstar
(University of Cambridge)
Camille Lardy (University of Cambridge)
Nicholas Lackenby (University College London)
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- Stream:
- Irresponsibility and Failure
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 30 March, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel invites contributions from across the European region and its periphery to ask: At what scale are disenchanted blocs of the electorate locating blame for the perceived failures of European liberal democratic politics? And to which alternative actors are they turning for solutions?
Long Abstract:
This panel responds to mounting public and academic speculation that we are witnessing a crisis in the legitimacy of European liberal democratic politics. It asks: At what scale are European interlocutors identifying the locus of blame for the perceived failures of liberal democratic institutions and party-political actors? In the wake of which national and international crises? And to what supra-national, national, or intra-national institutions and bodies are disenchanted blocs of the electorate turning for alternatives to the political status quo? Are these institutions and bodies understood as 'outside' of politics, or as interruptions to politics as usual? Why do interlocutors place their faith in these alternative actors, and by what moral and political rubrics are they deemed suitably responsible custodians of public trust? This panel therefore queries whether political movements in the European region often described as reactionary, populist, ethnonationalist, and/or secular might in fact be cracking open space for novel ideological realignments. The aim is to better understand everyday commitments to, and scepticism of, powerful political actors in institutions including, but not limited to, church, state, financial bodies, and the European Union. To that extent, ethnographic contributions are invited from across the European region, and its periphery, to examine emerging judgments regarding what counts as legitimate political power and for whom. Taken together, these cases will be mined for insight regarding what distinctive empirical and theoretical contributions anthropology might offer interdisciplinary debates on the putative crisis of trust in European liberal democracy.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 30 March, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
This paper examines French Catholics’ recently-fraught public politics in light of a tension between two scalar imaginaries of political responsibility: the French Republican reliance on national centralisation, and the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, or the ‘smallest scale appropriate’.
Paper long abstract:
This paper considers the changing scalar imaginaries of political responsibility held by young French Catholics inspired by the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church. Drawing on twelve months of fieldwork among an association of ecologically-minded young Catholic intellectuals in Lyon, France, it shows how the public enactment of their newly-green political conscience evades and challenges the long-established scalar imaginary of the French Republic and its democratic processes.
I explore how, by contrast with the French Republican reliance on abstract universalism and national centralisation, young French Catholic intellectuals have recently made use of the Catholic principle of subsidiarity – or the ‘principle of the smallest scale appropriate’ – in their reflections about political responsibility and grassroots agency. Confronting what they see as inadequacies in the French state’s responses to the urgency of ecological and social crises, my interlocutors wield the ‘principle of the smallest scale appropriate’ in order to determine the ‘appropriateness’ of local, regional, international and global scales of political responsibility and responsive action – scales which may be both smaller and larger than that of the Republican nation-state.
The paper therefore examines the recently-fraught place of French Catholics on the national public stage not (only) in terms of a conflictual presence of religious actors in a secular political sphere, but as a tension between two visions of the scalar articulation of responsibility, individual dignity, and collective ‘Common Good’.
Paper short abstract:
I explore how some Serbians situate their country's politics in a much wider relational field, and so evacuate parliamentary procedure as a site for action. Rather, imagining that Serbia’s future will inevitably be decided by external actors, they seek both proximate and abstract solutions.
Paper long abstract:
This paper considers how people may perceive the liberal democratic landscape of their country as being wholly subject to the interests of external actors, and effectively beyond their control as voters. With an ethnographic focus on central Serbia, the paper explores the voices of people who might be termed ‘conservative’, and who frequently assert the value of Serbian traditions and the Orthodox Church. Despite the waves of anti-government protests which rocked Belgrade in the summer of 2020, my interlocutors remain sceptical of such action, claiming that Balkan governments are only ever changed when it suits the interests of the ‘Great Powers’. Thus, responsibility for Serbia’s ailments is always scaled upwards to powerful actors, such as the EU, NATO, and ‘the West’. Similarly, help might also come from the outside intervention of Russia, or even the Trump administration.
Ultimately, the paper shows how my interlocutors effectively evacuate national parliamentary procedure as a site for action. Rather, they seek solutions at levels which are simultaneously more proximate and more abstract. On the one hand, they focus on ‘getting by’, playing the system, and asserting their scepticism of all ‘politics’. On the other, they imagine the ‘Serbian people’ as implicated in much wider geopolitical and sometimes cosmological dynamics, where the narrative becomes about a struggle between the West and the Orthodox world, and ultimately, between good and evil.
Paper short abstract:
In 2019 elections, many Labour heartlands in the British coalfields elected a Conservative representative for the first time. Labeled as "the crumble of the Red Wall", this historic turn was caused by the Brexit campaign in places that badly suffered the effects of deindustrialisation.
Paper long abstract:
My master's fieldwork on the effects of deindustrialisation in former coalfields in South and West Yorkshire accidentally coincided with the campaign and the aftermath of the December 2019 general elections, when people were called to choose between the promise of a second referendum made by the Labour Party and the firm determination of the Conservative Party to finally “get Brexit done.”
In mining villages, traditional Labour heartlands since more than a century which had expressed overwhelming support for Leave in 2016 referendum, the decision was experienced by many as an unforgivable treason, the demonstration of the fact that their will meant nothing in the eyes of a London-centric political class.
When the results were announced, many coalfield constituencies found themselves to be represented by a Conservative MP for the first time in their history.
Despite being still rhetorically celebrated, the working class solidarity that characterised mining communities gradually faded away with the closing of the mines, the centre of the symbolic order of the communities and the horizon of meaning around which every aspect of social life revolved. It was replaced by what has been called ''coal nationalism'', a mixture of nostalgia for the industrial past, sense of abandonment, fear of the precariousness of the present and resentment for a perceived state of decay of the country.
These ingredients represented the ideal terrain for eurosceptic forces, whose mantra 'Take back control' promised a restoration of the lost stability of the past.