Populism Versus the New Globalization

Barrie Axford is Professor Emeritus in politics in the School of Social Sciences at Oxford Brookes University, where he was founding Director of the Centre for Global Politics Economy and Society (GPES). He is interested in global theory, processes of globalization, and the framing of politics by digital media. His books include The Global System (1996); Theories of Globalization (2013); The World-Making Power of New Media: Mere Connection? (2018) and 3 co-authored editions of Politics: An Introduction. He has recently co-edited Rethinking Ideology in the Age of Global Discontent, with Gulmez.B and Gulmez, D (2018) and Political Sociologies of the Cultural Encounter, with Brisbourne, A, Halperin, S and Lueders, C (2020). Currently, he is guest editor for a Special Forum of the journal Globalizations on Is an Integrated Theory of Globalization Possible, and is it Desirable? and guest co-editor (with Manfred Steger) of the forthcoming 2021 volume of the journal Protosociology, on Populism and Globalization. His work has been translated into several languages. He is starting work on a book about the indifferent globality of viruses, BIg Data and A.I.

In this succinct overview of contemporary populism, Axford dispels the myth of the new populism′s conceptual opposition to globalization. Instead, he charts the connections between the forces of the new 21st century globalization and the rise of national populism. The author brilliantly incorporates the role of localism in the emergence of populist movements and shows how these localist forces provide a new narrative for interpreting globalization in the 21st century. While populism is a very broad and fuzzy concept, the author successfully makes a meaningful and highly insightful contribution to the understanding of contemporary global politics. This book will be extremely useful for upper-undergraduate and graduate level courses on democracy, global governance and world politics.

• Chapter 1: Populism and Globalization: Uneasy BedfellowsChapter 2: What′s in A Name? Populism in Thought (And Some Deeds)Chapter 3: Populism in Practice: Causes, Correlates and CrisesChapter 4: Populism and The New GlobalizationChapter 5: Populism: Pathological Localism or Vernacular Glocalization?Chapter 6: Postmodern Populism, Globalization, and the Crisis of ModernityEpilogue: Postmodern Populism and The New Globalization - Reasons To Be Cheerful?