Guest Lecture : David Copello
Doing things with « populism »: Essentially-contested political concepts and the sociology of ideas
David Copello est chercheur post-doctorant, AGORA - CY Cergy Paris Université et chercheur associé IHEAL-CREDA.
“Populism” has become one of the most common political concepts to describe contemporary dynamics of (and threats to) Western democracies. There is however no general scientific agreement as to what populism actually is. In this lecture, I will contend that, instead of looking desperately for the ultimate definition of this phenomenon, social scientists should study how “populism-talk” is structured and what it does to the social understandings of political cleavages. In other words, I will defend an approach of “populism” based on a sociology of ideas research agenda.
The presentation will be divided into four sections. I will first give a short presentation of the main existing conceptions of “populism” in the social sciences [1]. I will then explain why it can be considered an essentially-contested concept, and how research could do things with “populism” instead of looking for its true nature [2]. I will then present two potential applications of this research perspective: a study of partisan appropriations of the concept of “populism” in contemporary left-wing organizations [3] and an investigation of ordinary understandings of “populism” among rank-and-file activists [4].
Date : 14 décembre 2021 de 12h30 à 14h00
La guest lecture hybride est organisée en présence à l'Auditorium de la MIR à Neuville-sur-Oise et à distance sur Zoom.
La vidéo est publiée sur la chaîne YouTube de CY AS