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Paper short abstract:

Based on field visists and interviews with workers in retail and logistics, we introduce the concept "Cultures of Rejection". It allows for an anthropological investigation into the conditions of acceptability for neo-authoritarian and exclusionary politics in socio-spatial and digital environments.

Paper long abstract:

Research on Populism is proliferating in the current moment. Mainly developed in the fields of philosophy, sociology or political theory, it employs categories such as "Right-Wing Populism", "Authoritarianism", "Neo-Nationalism" or "Neo-Fascism", to describe the current political and cultural conjuncture.

Our paper theoretically introduces and empirically examines the concept of "Cultures of Rejection", which allows us to conduct anthropological research into this conjuncture. The concept aims to analyse everyday practices, discourses and cultural formations based on values, norms and affects that reject a variety of social, political and cultural objects such as immigration, domestic political elites, institutions of civil society and the media, shifting gender relations and European integration. Rather than focusing on voting preferences or political attitudes, the term "Cultures of Rejection" allows us to introduce anthropological perspectives on the socio-cultural conditions of right-wing populism's current success. It draws our attention to "modes of living", linked to experiences of crisis and change.

Drawing on qualitative Interviews and field visits with workers in retail and logistics companies in Austria and Germany, we analyse which dimensions of transformation and crisis both do and do not become meaningful for informants' everyday lives. We show how experiences in the workplace, in socio-spatial and in digital environments shape the conditions of acceptability for far-right, authoritarian or exclusionist politics. Our aim is to conduct an integrated ethnography in order to analyse the intersubjective dimensions of rejection in relation to their spatial surroundings, as well as the conditions for challenging or resisting them.