Backwater Histories: Tracing the Socio-Cultural Genealogies of Europe's Reactionary Backlash
| Dates: | 22 March 2021 |
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| Times: | 16:00 - 17:30 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | School of Social Sciences |
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| How much: | Free |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, External researchers, Adults |
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| Speaker: | Dr Annika Lems |
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Dr Annika Lems, Max Planck Institute, Germany
Chaired by Soumhya Venkatesan
Title: Backwater Histories: Tracing the Socio-Cultural Genealogies of Europe's Reactionary Backlash
Abstract: In this paper I will present fresh findings from a research project that investigates the backlash against liberal and cosmopolitan agendas marking much of Europe’s current political landscape. The Brexit referendum in the UK was the first in a succession of events throughout Europe that revealed how many people are craving the return to an idealised, imperial or authoritarian past – a past they believe holds a stronger sense of community and social cohesion. Against the backdrop of this political turmoil, a growing number of scholars and commentators argue that we are entering a postliberal era – an era of eroded support for liberal values such as individual freedom and diversity. In my paper I aim to complicate these common explanatory models. Based on fieldwork with heritage clubs in mountain villages in the South of Austria that form a traditional bastion for reactionary political movements, I will shed light on the kinds of histories people search out to create a sense of belonging and temporal cohesion. By looking into the socio-cultural genealogies underwriting illiberal cultural practices, I will trace the question of whether there has ever been a “pre” to what is widely assumed to be the aftermath of a liberal democratic era of modernity. Or put differently, is postliberalism a misconception that risks exceptionalising xenophobic and anti-liberal practices, rather than actually addressing them?
Annika Lems is a social anthropologist with a keen interest in the ways people experience, negotiate and actively create place attachments in an age of rapid global transformations. She is currently heading the research group "Alpine Histories of Global Change: Time, Self and the Other in the German-speaking Alpine Region" at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/ Germany. She has published on questions of belonging, inclusion and exclusion, refugee education, im/mobility and existential epistemologies in a wide range of journals. Her monograph "Being-Here: Placemaking in a World of Movement" was published with Berghahn in 2018.
Access here: https://zoom.us/j/94209216674
Meeting ID: 942 0921 6674
Passcode: 114642
Speaker
Dr Annika Lems
Organisation: Max Planck Institute, Germany
Biography: Annika Lems is a social anthropologist with a keen interest in the ways people experience, negotiate and actively create place attachments in an age of rapid global transformations. She is currently heading the research group "Alpine Histories of Global Change: Time, Self and the Other in the German-speaking Alpine Region" at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/ Germany. She has published on questions of belonging, inclusion and exclusion, refugee education, im/mobility and existential epistemologies in a wide range of journals. Her monograph "Being-Here: Placemaking in a World of Movement" was published with Berghahn in 2018.
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