Paper short abstract:

Populist protest votes are challenging the centrist projects of liberal democracy. And radical reconfigurations of nationalism and state are redefining personhood. What light can an international conversation shed on crises of advanced capitalism and the politics of the contemporary moment?

Paper long abstract:

The centrist projects of liberal democracy, a long-term ally of multiculturalism and neoliberalism, are struggling in Europe and the US in the face of populist protest. In England and North America, 'left behind communities' of post-industrial capitalism found their voices in votes for Brexit and Trump. Across Europe right-wing, right-of-centre, or fascist movements claim to speak for those abandoned by a vision of progressive society built on austerity measures, fracturing regional geographies, increasingly inequitable service economies, alliances between white middle class, black and minority ethnic aspirations, and gendered liberation movements.

This sense of fracture is not confined to Europe and the US. In India, for example, a right-wing assemblage of anti-Muslim, Hindu nationalist movements threatens to demolish the secular modernity of the past with an anti-liberal, anti-left-wing, anti-establishment cultural nationalism. The gendered dynamics of this conservative mind-set mean women's resistance, and fights for equal access to the competitive opportunities of India's rapidly developing neoliberal capitalism. While in Mongolia, crises of post-socialism have spawned nativist movements of novel kinds. These include the unleashing of 'the wolf spirit', which sees, in the violent subordination of women, the opportunity for the resurgence of masculinity, which young men perceive to be under threat and in crisis.

This paper explores how attempts to reconfigure the projects of nationalism and the state are also projects to do with reconfiguring the very idea of society and the experiential state of being of persons.