Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CODE_FLUX (Cultural Codes in Crisis: Unsettled Civil Spheres in Brexit, the 2016 US Presidential Election, and the 2017 German Federal Election)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2021-04-01 al 2023-03-31
This Action takes place in and investigates a context in which western democracies have been showing dimensions of populism, ethnonationalism, and isolationism rippling through their cultural, political and economic institutions in degrees not seen in decades.
Variably, these democratic social orders had been showing movement toward institutionalizing multicultural models of civil inclusion, in which differences were not merely tolerated but accepted and interpreted as desirable. Counter to the lowering of barriers, however, in the second decade of the new century, some nations started to display robust, organized backlash movements aimed at reinforcing terms of inclusion rooted in primordial hierarchies associated with national, ethnic, racial, religious, and gender traits.
These developments have also upended trends toward the further entrenchment of international relations based on the freedom of movement of peoples and commodities. In this context, immigration and migration patterns have been challenged directly and intensely. Likewise, nations have moved toward withdrawing from international partnerships that had facilitated trade and promised security, as well as from agreements designed to coordinate efforts to mitigate crises global in scale. In sum, the Action investigates a context in which commitments to pluralistic democratic institutions have been thrown into flux.
The Action takes place in the disciplinary context of sociology’s search for foundational cultural elements that control, anchor, and organize other, more context-specific and malleable cultural forms such as myths and narratives. The issue speaks to one of the discipline’s central questions: what are the sources of social order and its reproduction over time in complex, pluralistic, and highly differentiated publics that are committed to democracy? Identifying the foundational cultural elements, it is believed, will move the discipline closer to understanding the sources of social order.
The Action’s objective is to address this question directly by looking for the foundational cultural elements that control, anchor, and organize the political and civil discourse articulated in two research sites characterized by the developments outline above. The objectives are to identify these interpretive structures and to investigate how they have been made manifest and put to use in this context. Another objective is to discern if their presence and usage indicate whether or not these publics remain committed to democratic principles. If not, the research aims to explain how the practice of espousing democratic ideals can be used to pursue anti- or counter-democratic ends.
Variably, these democratic social orders had been showing movement toward institutionalizing multicultural models of civil inclusion, in which differences were not merely tolerated but accepted and interpreted as desirable. Counter to the lowering of barriers, however, in the second decade of the new century, some nations started to display robust, organized backlash movements aimed at reinforcing terms of inclusion rooted in primordial hierarchies associated with national, ethnic, racial, religious, and gender traits.
These developments have also upended trends toward the further entrenchment of international relations based on the freedom of movement of peoples and commodities. In this context, immigration and migration patterns have been challenged directly and intensely. Likewise, nations have moved toward withdrawing from international partnerships that had facilitated trade and promised security, as well as from agreements designed to coordinate efforts to mitigate crises global in scale. In sum, the Action investigates a context in which commitments to pluralistic democratic institutions have been thrown into flux.
The Action takes place in the disciplinary context of sociology’s search for foundational cultural elements that control, anchor, and organize other, more context-specific and malleable cultural forms such as myths and narratives. The issue speaks to one of the discipline’s central questions: what are the sources of social order and its reproduction over time in complex, pluralistic, and highly differentiated publics that are committed to democracy? Identifying the foundational cultural elements, it is believed, will move the discipline closer to understanding the sources of social order.
The Action’s objective is to address this question directly by looking for the foundational cultural elements that control, anchor, and organize the political and civil discourse articulated in two research sites characterized by the developments outline above. The objectives are to identify these interpretive structures and to investigate how they have been made manifest and put to use in this context. Another objective is to discern if their presence and usage indicate whether or not these publics remain committed to democratic principles. If not, the research aims to explain how the practice of espousing democratic ideals can be used to pursue anti- or counter-democratic ends.
In effort to test, revise as needed, and extend a theory called the binary discourse of civil society, the work performed has investigated two exemplary events thus far: the prelude to the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom, and the rise and institutionalization of Trumpism in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
The work performed has involved gathering large data sets of media representations including news and opinion pieces, transcripts of political actors’ performances, and citizens’ expressions of political and civil sentiments. Next, the work has been dedicated to analyzing these data using a method called structural hermeneutics. This method involves closely reading texts for terms that political actors emphasize and repeat in order to represent themselves as embodying democratic ideals, and their policy prescriptions as designed to move the greater community closer to its ideal vision of itself. The work has also involved identifying the opposite, or namely, the terms that are emphasized and repeated in order to represent one’s opposition as embodying counter-democratic traits and their plans as ruinous for the community.
The work performed has involved gathering large data sets of media representations including news and opinion pieces, transcripts of political actors’ performances, and citizens’ expressions of political and civil sentiments. Next, the work has been dedicated to analyzing these data using a method called structural hermeneutics. This method involves closely reading texts for terms that political actors emphasize and repeat in order to represent themselves as embodying democratic ideals, and their policy prescriptions as designed to move the greater community closer to its ideal vision of itself. The work has also involved identifying the opposite, or namely, the terms that are emphasized and repeated in order to represent one’s opposition as embodying counter-democratic traits and their plans as ruinous for the community.
The research results show that political actors on opposite sides of a particular referendum or election appeal to the same sets of characteristics to define themselves as democratic and their opponents as polluted or dangerous, or as counter-democratic. They indicate that the positive and negative terms have been used repeatedly over time. They show that the terms are invoked not only within a national community but across the case studies. These results indicate that the code is extra-individual in nature, or that it operates as a symbolic structure, one that shapes the interpretive dispositions of those who are born and socialized into the greater community. Having these qualities, the results have identified a binary code that operates as a cultural foundation on which more situationally-specific myths and narratives are assembled, and upon which they depend for generating persuasive power.
For instance, in the Brexit case, the Leave campaign routinely represented itself as active, autonomous, rational and reasonable, and their opponents as passive, dependent and unreasonable. They claimed to have formed relationships that were open, and straightforward, while they described their opponents’ relationships as secretive, calculating, and suspicious. The main finding in this case was that the Leave campaign represented itself in terms that cast it as strongly committed to democratic principles and practices. It coded its enemy, the European Union, as a thoroughly counter-democratic institution committed to anti-democratic ends. Atop these foundational cultural codes, the Leave campaign presented a standard populist narrative of calculating elites working secretively with an extraordinarily powerful, unaccountable European Union, to use migrants and immigrants to dominate and displace a pure and just, democratic British people.
Similar cultural processes were evident in the United States during the same period, exemplified in the rise, consolidation and entrenchment of a reactionary right under the auspices of Trumpism. Like in Brexit’s themes, the Trump campaign coded its competitors in similar counter-democratic terms, and it built atop this coding populist narratives of elites using marginalized groups to dominate “the people.” Trump’s discourse differed from the Leave campaign’s, however, in this key aspect: Trump represented himself as embodying characteristics of both the democratic and the counter-democratic codes. Atop this coding, he articulated the American Frontier myth, which holds that the nation’s heroic leaders are born embodying democratic traits, on the one hand, and have life experiences that teach them the devious and deadly, counter-democratic techniques of their enemies, on the other. In this way, Trump shifted his counter-democratic aspects from being disqualifying to being interpreted as necessary and desirable.
The Action’s research results corroborate and extend the theory of the binary discourse of civil society. The work represents the most thorough and extensive research into the codes to date. For the first time, it shows the codes operating across cultural contexts. Additionally, the findings also represent a significant contribution to sociology’s effort to identify the foundational cultural elements that control, anchor, and organize other cultural forms such as national myths and populist narratives. The research will help researchers explain the backlash, populist movements that are lending the politics of our contemporary moment their character and shaping a period that analysts are calling democracy in crisis.
For instance, in the Brexit case, the Leave campaign routinely represented itself as active, autonomous, rational and reasonable, and their opponents as passive, dependent and unreasonable. They claimed to have formed relationships that were open, and straightforward, while they described their opponents’ relationships as secretive, calculating, and suspicious. The main finding in this case was that the Leave campaign represented itself in terms that cast it as strongly committed to democratic principles and practices. It coded its enemy, the European Union, as a thoroughly counter-democratic institution committed to anti-democratic ends. Atop these foundational cultural codes, the Leave campaign presented a standard populist narrative of calculating elites working secretively with an extraordinarily powerful, unaccountable European Union, to use migrants and immigrants to dominate and displace a pure and just, democratic British people.
Similar cultural processes were evident in the United States during the same period, exemplified in the rise, consolidation and entrenchment of a reactionary right under the auspices of Trumpism. Like in Brexit’s themes, the Trump campaign coded its competitors in similar counter-democratic terms, and it built atop this coding populist narratives of elites using marginalized groups to dominate “the people.” Trump’s discourse differed from the Leave campaign’s, however, in this key aspect: Trump represented himself as embodying characteristics of both the democratic and the counter-democratic codes. Atop this coding, he articulated the American Frontier myth, which holds that the nation’s heroic leaders are born embodying democratic traits, on the one hand, and have life experiences that teach them the devious and deadly, counter-democratic techniques of their enemies, on the other. In this way, Trump shifted his counter-democratic aspects from being disqualifying to being interpreted as necessary and desirable.
The Action’s research results corroborate and extend the theory of the binary discourse of civil society. The work represents the most thorough and extensive research into the codes to date. For the first time, it shows the codes operating across cultural contexts. Additionally, the findings also represent a significant contribution to sociology’s effort to identify the foundational cultural elements that control, anchor, and organize other cultural forms such as national myths and populist narratives. The research will help researchers explain the backlash, populist movements that are lending the politics of our contemporary moment their character and shaping a period that analysts are calling democracy in crisis.