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- Convenors:
-
Sam Rumé
(University of Barcelona)
Thomas Long (The University of Manchester)
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- Formats:
- Panel
Short Abstract
Populism urgently needs to be rematerialized, that is, understood as inherently material. What are the objects, infrastructures, and ecologies participating in populist dynamics and how do they shape the leader, “the people,” and social polarization?
Long Abstract
At least since Brexit and Trump’s first term, populism in the Global North has been described as “postmaterialist” by some. That is, it is not considered as grounded in material realities of basic needs or class struggle, but in identity politics (or a reaction to it), nationalism, and racism. Further, a focus on the “post-truth” predicament in which many populist movements seem to thrive gives the impression that such movements are increasingly detached from material, factual reality.
This panel, however, suggests that populism, just like any political configuration, cannot be detached from the material world in and through which it develops. In other words, populist dynamics are inherently material, and specific materialities co-constitute the specific forms populism takes, including the figure of the charismatic leader, the formation of “the people,” and exacerbated social polarization. Thus, the aim of the panel is to rematerialize populism. It seeks to bring together ethnographies which focus on the material dimensions of different populist contexts throughout the world, including those often considered “postmaterialist.” These materialities may involve bodies, technologies, infrastructures, environments, and other. How do these aspects participate in shaping populist dynamics, and how are they shaped by populism in return?
To “rematerialize” populism in this way is not (or not simply) to return to a Marxist focus on class. Rather, it is about introducing kinds of materials which have always been neglected in political analyses, relegated to the roles of passive objects and instruments. The rematerialization envisaged here reflects the active power of matter in shaping “the people,” in supporting and threatening personalist leaders, in provoking social polarization. It is an urgent task to grasp the materialities of populist dynamics, in order to understand and engage more productively with contemporary populism.
Accepted papers
Session 1Paper short abstract
Bolsonarism is rooted in Brazil’s Frontier. Its far-right imaginary is shaped by a pioneer ethos that links ecology, politics, and everyday life, giving rise to violent and exclusionary forms of citizenship.
Paper long abstract
In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro’s victory in the 2018 presidential election came as a surprise to the progressive left. It was interpreted either as a temporary anomaly, the result of public opinion manipulation by the mainstream media and economic elites, or as yet another manifestation of the global rise of “populisms.”
This paper takes a different approach, situating Bolsonarism within an ecological, political, and domestic configuration at the heart of Brazilian society: the Frontier. I argue that Bolsonarism revives a model of citizenship inherited from the pioneer frontiers: the white head of household who lives off the resources of his land, never ventures out without his rifle, ready to defend his property from the “Savages,” and who answers only to God. I further suggest that the growing intervention of the State, through social and environmental policies promoted by left-leaning governments, partly explains why Bolsonarism garnered support among people living in frontier regions.
This analysis draws on my own ethnography of urban frontiers, as well as other ethnographic studies of pioneer fronts in the Amazon, and on references to “freedom” (liberdade) in Bolsonaro’s public speeches. I engage with anthropology, history and geography to understand the Frontier as a way of inhabiting the world—a system of practical, affective, and symbolic relations with others, everyday territories (homes and land), and nature.
Finally, I suggest that this sociomaterial matrix has also shaped far-right imaginaries in Europe, opening a new dialogue between the anthropology of populism, decolonial studies, and the history of fascism.
Paper short abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic appeared to unleash new forms of "medical populism" (Lasco, 2025). This paper analyzes the place of the body in populist politics through an ethnography of the Senegalese popular ecology movement Set/Setal.
Paper long abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic appeared to unleash a new wave of “medical populism” (Alibudbud 2023; Lasco 2025) characterized by hubristic claims about the efficacies of self-care, rooted in an individualized epistemology of ‘doing your own research’, tending towards the hardening and enforcement of national borders.
This paper seeks to reevaluate the place of the body and its politics in populist moments and movements, presenting an ethnography of the Senegalese popular ecology movement “Set/Setal”. “Set/Setal” is a singular historical event that took place in Dakar at the very end of the 1980s when the city “exploded”. For the duration of one intoxicating summer, young people began to publicly clean their neighbourhoods, at the same time calling for a new kind of common existence through the cleansing and renewal of social and political life. Set/Setal has lived on, however, both in the tradition in Dakar of embellishing the city to communicate with fellow citizens about bodies and environments, and as a and set of public practices that take protean forms and emerge at moments of pressure to reclaim and reorganize public space.
The paper argues that, in common with many populist movements, Set/Setal emerged as a response to ossifying, colonial and condescending forms of communication. The process of seizing the means of communication, however, involved grappling with local and concrete material relations and the problem of cleanliness. Paying attention to Set/Setal's history and ongoing mutations, I argue, has much to teach us about the basis and future trajectories of populist politics.
Paper short abstract
The paper examines the resurgence of hispanidad in Spain and Latin America through documentary film. Drawing on the anthropology of nationalism, it links audiovisual productions with far-right networks and communities that mobilize ethnic and religious identities.
Paper long abstract
In Spain and across much of Latin America, the narrative of hispanidad has made a marked comeback. Hispanidad (only partially translatable as “Hispanicness”) emerged in early Spanish fascist movements and is particularly associated with Ramiro de Maeztu, the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera, and later with the “Falange Española” political party.
The aim of this article is to connect audiovisual productions from the Spanish film industry with social groups disseminating this narrative through events and communities, both in-person and online. We use as case of study the documentary serie of the director López Linares and the groups associated for the production and distribution of those three documentaries.
Our approach draws on social anthropology, specifically the anthropology of nationalism. Following recent work on the cultural construction of nationalism (Lomnitz 2001; Boyer and Lomnitz 2005; Gómez-Pellón 2023), we trace connections between the work of intellectuals (here, filmmakers collaborating with historians and writers) and far-right movements. From this vantage point, we analyse how products of “high culture”, such as films, are central instruments for the emotive mobilization of ethnic and religious identities of far-right populism, feeding into networks for the circulation of emotions through content dissemination and its translation into mass-culture formats, such as short-form videos for social media (primarily TikTok and YouTube).
The paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork, netnography, and in-depth interviews with key actors, including the film director López Linares.
Paper short abstract
This paper examines how infrastructural projects materialize populist governance by constituting political relationships between residents, local officials, and national government in rural Poland.
Paper long abstract
This paper examines how infrastructural projects materialized political relations in rural Poland under right-wing nationalist Law and Justice government. Drawing on 13 months of ethnographic fieldwork in a north-central town and its surrounding areas (August 2022-September 2023) in the run-up to Poland’s 2023 parliamentary elections, I examine how roads, bike lanes and other infrastructure projects become sites where populist governance is materialized and where political effectiveness is measured and performed. In rural Poland, infrastructure is a medium through which politics become tangible: local officials measure their own success through completed projects; governments’ performance is assessed by counting kilometres of asphalt; and MPs and ministers project their presence into localities through ribbon-cutting ceremonies. Informational signage on EU and National funding schemes placed next to infrastructural developments translates abstract supranational and national political entities into concrete impacts on local material reality. The Law and Justice government (2015-2023), in particular, has positioned itself as responsive to long-neglected rural infrastructural needs. By focusing on these material dimensions, the paper considers how populist appeal operates through the delivery of desired “goods”, showing how concrete, asphalt, and paving stones constitute political alignments, partisan loyalty, and perceptions of governmental effectiveness.
Paper short abstract
This paper examines how yurts function as mobile political infrastructures in Hungarian right-wing populism, enabling ideological communication, affective proximity, and self-orientalism while sustaining the appearance of spontaneity within an increasingly institutionalised populist state.
Paper long abstract
Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Hungary, this paper looks at cultural and political initiatives around the Kurultaj festival and related state-backed projects as sites where Viktor Orbán’s populism is made and performed. These initiatives promote Hungarian claims of cultural, ancestral, and political kinship with Central Asian peoples and have become central to the symbolic repertoire of the Orbán government. One recurring object within this repertoire is the yurt. Since the 1990s, yurts have circulated in Hungary both as hobby structures and as fixtures of festivals, exhibitions, and political events sponsored by the state.
The yurt’s appeal lies partly in its technical qualities: it is lightweight, mobile, easy to assemble and dismantle. These very qualities allow it to function as a political infrastructure. Set against the image of Brussels as a distant, technocratic “castle,” the yurt stages proximity, informality, and a sense of the governing elite being physically and affectively “among the people.” In a context where populism has become structurally embedded in state institutions, such temporary assemblages help maintain an impression of spontaneity, immediacy, and direct communication between leader and people.
Critics often attack the yurt as inauthentic to Hungarian history, but this paper argues that the question of authenticity misses the point. What matters is how yurts are used as communicative and affective infrastructures, channelling self-orientalism, identity bravado, and phatic forms of political belonging. The paper shows how the yurt, as a mobile architecture, becomes a key vessel of contemporary right-wing populist propaganda in Hungary.
Paper short abstract
The paper will explore how protesters in Serbia inscribed materiality to fight “post-truth” populism, by creating an identification of damage to the buildings to the experience of violence the protesters suffered.
Paper long abstract
The protests against the populist governing in Serbia started in 2016 on the day after Vucic’s party won the parliamentary elections. The same night, a neighbourhood in the center of Belgrade was demolished, starting a first wave of protests that are still ongoing.
In this paper based on my fieldwork on protests in Belgrade, I want to look at anti-populist protesters’ engagement with the particular forms of materiality. It was used to create a political ontology of resistance by re-introducing materiality to dispute “post-truth” populism. I will show how protesters inscribed and interpreted the populist spatial, social and economic embedding into the built environment.
I am going to focus on how the damage of the built environment was identified with, by those resisting. Through this process, the destroyed buildings were made to reveal the violence suffered by protesters. I develop how affects are framed in relation to and through damaged materiality, while some other bodily experiences of violence are silenced.
This piece aims to ethnographically reveal and theorize the link between agency, subjectivities and bodies of protestors and demolished neighbourhood, infrastructure, and a collapsed railway station. It offers an analytical insight into how forms of resistance articulate and link the damage to human and non-human actors alike and shape the anti-populist resistance.
Paper short abstract
As the state is seen to be failing, the informal economy of agricultural products can be addressed as a material base for the rise of populism in rural Greece.
Paper long abstract
Across Europe, farmers are confronted with a range of challenges, including income instability, indebtedness, substandard working conditions, exhaustion, and social exclusion. The significant mobilizations that occurred in numerous European countries in 2024 represent a crucial development in the struggle of these farmers. However, these protests are not the sole avenue for addressing their concerns. In Greece, a wide range of agricultural products, including olive oil, dairy products, tobacco and alcohol, are produced by small family farms, then distributed through informal networks and finally consumed by relatives or friends, without state oversight and with non-payment of legal taxes to the Greek state. The proliferation of this informal activity has significant ramifications for the formation of fundamental aspects of social life, including the current definition of legitimacy. Moreover, the rich symbolic connotations of rural idyll embodied by (consuming) agricultural products mean that participation in informality is being experienced as a form of belonging (Kalb 2025). As the state is seen to be failing, trust in interpersonal relationships, as opposed to formal ways of organizing social life, leads (the) people to seek a personal, perceived as more valid commitment from the state when entering into the social contract. If informality simultaneously undermines the system on which it depends, so does populism (Kapferer 2019). The aim of this presentation is to demonstrate that the informal economy of agricultural products can be addressed as a material base for the rise of populism in rural Greece.