The Anthropology of Populism: Beyond the Liberal Settlement

Abstract

This article suggests that although there is not much of an explicitly defined anthropology of populism, anthropologists have nevertheless been working for many years on the things we talk about when we talk about populism. Anthropologists should thus be exceptionally well situated to divert the debate on populism in creative ways. In particular, I argue that the term populism registers an intensified insistence of collective forces that are no longer adequately organized by formerly hegemonic social forms: a mattering-forth of the collective flesh. The article also shows why populism is such an awkward topic for anthropologists. In part, this discomfort has to do with a tension between anthropologists’ effectively populist commitments to the common sense of common people at a time when that common sense can often look ugly. In part, it has to do with how the populist challenge to liberalism both aligns populist politics with anthropological critiques of liberal norms and puts pressure on anthropology's continued dependence on liberal categories for its own relevance to broader public debates.