Paper short abstract:

The lecture deals with the motif of "cultural cleavage", which is a current issue in the debate about right-wing populism. It will be shown that it is a problematic concept that reproduces right-wing populist narratives. Moreover, it is instructive for the self-reflection of ethnographic research.

Paper long abstract:

Many reactions to the massive rise of right-wing populism in Europe and the USA since 2015 are showing a recurring pattern of interpretation: the pattern of "cultural cleavage". Many commentators are talking about cultural cleavage lines which overlap the social cleavage lines and are used to explain political conflicts: on the one hand, the well-educated "liberal elites", on the other hand, the "losers of globalization". They speak of a new contrast between "cosmopolitans" and "communitarians", between "anywheres" and "somewheres" or between the "academic middle class" and the "new underclass". In the analysis of this discourse, it is striking that the basic diagnosis of society seems to have been taken directly from the right-wing populist repertoire: the idea that the "liberal elites" have lost contact to the "common people" is, after all, part of the core of the populist narrative. From an anthropological perspective, this constellation raises many questions: What is actually negotiated in the new social diagnoses? To what extent does self-criticism of the arrogant "liberal elites" play into the hands of right-wing populism instead of fighting it? And what does the motive of "cultural cleavage" mean for ethnographic research on right-wing populism and right-wing extremism, for which the question of proximity and distance to the field is constitutive? The lecture focuses on the discourse around "cultural cleavage" as a problematic narrative that combines populism and anti-populism and asks about the strategies of complexity reduction that can be found in it. Thus, it also contributes to ethnographic methodology.