What Brexit Means explores the rise of populism in Britain. Drawing on several years of ethnographic fieldwork amongst ideologically committed Brexit activists, it examines the discourse of populism across language, culture, politics, psychology, and cognition. It explains how populism is expressed in terms of ritually renewing social order and solidarity. Rejecting the notion that the territory of populism studies belongs to political science, this book shows how it is in the realm of anthropology - myth, ritual, alterity, consciousness, selfhood - that we witness the most compelling examples of how a phenomena as modern as populism depends upon the same symbolic logics that we find in the premodern world. What Brexit Means is a demonstration of the power of anthropology to explain momentous and poorly predicted transformations in the global order. It will become a benchmark text for those eager for anthropology’s contribution to understanding the political turbulence that is rocking the stability of Western democracies.
By:
Max Horder
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9781032602936
ISBN 10: 1032602937
Series: Anthropology of Now
Pages: 232
Publication Date: 06 December 2024
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming
1. Introduction: What Brexit Means, 2. Chapter One: Does Britain Have a Sacred? Sacrifice, Renewal, and the 2019 December General Election, 3. Chapter Two: Britain Alone: Readings on Myth, Fantasy, and Reality, 4. Chapter Three: Carnival and Critique: Towards a Structural-Functionalist Reading of Brexit, 5. Chapter Four: Populist Man as Philosopher: How Magical Consciousness Shapes Conspiracy Fantasy, 6. Conclusion: Brexit Means Brexit
Max Horder is a cognitive anthropologist working on issues of belief, trust, and identity in modern Europe. He received his PhD in Anthropology at Princeton University for his work on populism in Britain.
