Populism from the Perspective of Methodological Individualism

• In Event: 557 - Theory Section Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 02. Drawing on Weber

Abstract

This paper argues that the most sophisticated advancements in contemporary and continental political theories of populism and their potential shortcomings can be best understood through the methodological orientation evidenced in the classical sociological theories of Weber and Durkheim. Built into Weber and Durkheim’s theories of the ‘social’ was already a nuanced perspective of ‘discourse’ as an implicit horizon of understanding that comprised both individual and collective levels of social phenomena. They understood culture not just in the Neo-Kantian sense of an objective and independent conceptual sphere, but also on the level of the ‘subjective component of belief.’ In tracing the emergent paradigm of populism as discourse through the history of social theory, this paper shows that at each subsequent stage of linguistic and psychoanalytic interventions, it is precisely this Weberian orientation toward methodological individualism that faces the peril of obfuscation from every reformulation of the ‘anonymous social field.’ Thus, in order to theoretically conceive of and operationalize the concept of populist discourse for comparative-historical analysis, this foray through the history of sociology and social theory reveals the ever-timely necessity to account for the classical sociological cornerstone of the ‘subjective component of belief.’

Author

• Ritchie Savage, Pratt Institute