Populist Voices and Post-Globalization

• In Event: ANZCA PANEL: Voicing Concern and Being Heard: Performances and Achievements

Abstract

Recently the world has seen the rise of populist political parties and movements that can be viewed as a reaction to globalization, particularly the combination of supranational governance, large-scale migration, and multicultural societies. Populism is often portrayed as the return of nationalism, as a movement that is reactionary in terms of broader global tendencies yet also consistent with dominant national ideologies concerning class, gender, race and identity. This paper argues that nationalism never disappeared, and the extent to which national societies were becoming cosmopolitan was always questionable. Moreover, alignments across the political right and left in the critique of global capitalism and the desire to “take back control” of national economies are playing out unevenly across nation-states and political systems. This paper considers the relationship of media to such developments in terms of emerging forms of “post-global media”, that have both global reach yet narrowcast around particular forms of identity. 

Author

• Terry Flew, Queensland U of Technology