Professor Rogers Smith, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science; Associate Dean for Social Sciences, University of Pennsylvania
Lecture I - “A Cacophony of Stories”
As both right-leaning and left-leaning movements labeled “populist” have surged in countries around the globe, analysts have debated the definition of populism and the economic and cultural causes of this surge. Less attention has been paid to the role of proliferating, conflicting “stories of peoplehood” in generating the appeal of nationalistic populist narratives, or to the content of the stories of who the people are, and why they deserve to govern, that these populist movements advance.