The project deals with the study of populism; with an emphasis on youth it analyzes populist groups and movements in reference to racism, xenophobia, religious intolerance, homophobia. We explore the ways in which different forms of intolerance through the construction of the "other" become part of the populist agenda, in the 9 countries involved in the project (France, Italy, Austria, Finland, Denmark, Hungary, Slovenia, Bulgaria and the United Kingdom). Special attention is devoted to the study of the functioning of groups and parties in the online environment; we examine in particular the role of the Internet as a space where exclusion is reproduced. Furthermore, attention is given to the analysis of actions of antiracist groups and initiatives to generate democratic, antiracist citizenship in European societies. Project coordinatior at the Peace Institute: Mojca Pajnik, Head of the project: University of Leicester, UK
D.01 Chairing over/coordinating (international and national) projects
In his 1960’s essay Dallas Smythe pointed out that political candidates have been turned into commodities, with politics now consumed as entertainment. A few decades later Schiller (1984) compared politics to advertising; political candidates are sold in a similar fashion to soap, he lamented. Crouch (2004) recently came to a similar conclusion, when he likened politicians to shopkeepers that do anything to stay in business. Our research focuses on the institutional political arena and analyses to what an extent the intensification of commodity-logic, based on instrumental reason, has extended to Slovenian political parties. Through an ethnographic inquiry into how political actors perceive democracy, citizenship, public (mediatised) communication and voters, we analyse in what ways parliamentary democracy (by mimicking capitalist relations) is turning into an instrumentalized technocratic governance devoid of democratic substance (e.g. Crouch, Blumler, Habermas). The study will proceed from critical theory (critique of instrumental reason and commodification) and Bourdieu’s theory of fields (1991/2003; 2005). The empirical part will be based on in-depth interviews conducted with general secretaries of Slovenian parliamentary parties and selected extra-parliamentary parties. It will delineate: (a) in what ways structure and functioning of the political field (Bourdieu) limits its agents; (b) how the logic of this relatively autonomous, yet socially embedded field, constrains actors to use its advantages and limitations to benefit themselves; and (c) in what ways (if any) parties differ in their acceptance of the (apparent) “rules of the game” of rationalized collecting of votes. Is there really no alternative (to use Thatcher’s famous slogan)?
B.03 Paper at an international scientific conference
COBISS.SI-ID: 33467229The award is granted by the faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, December 2014, award to Mojca Pajnik
E.01 National awards
The lecture addresses the question of how the predispositions and circumstances of participatory culture within the institutional politics are (un)related to the expectations and practices of users and what opinions young citizens generate in relation to the political digital culture . The answeres are given through a quantitative analysis of Slovenian political websites and in-depth interviews with a pilot sample of young internet users. The study follows the thesis that the necessary condition for participatory potentials of digital culture is intertwining of interactive communication paths between political actors and citizens in a form of cooperation, opinion exchanges and coproduction of content. However, following the results it seems that within the digital space of Slovenian politics the more realized is a group of young whose political participation relates to the conventional forms of activities, such as elections or polling, and who understand the citizenship as a duty, while the more activist, opinioned and inclusive forms of participation of young are in the digital political culture less present or even neglected.
B.04 Guest lecture
COBISS.SI-ID: 33746013The concept of citizenship is in itself contradictory and exclusive concept since the process of its nationalization (T. H. Marshall) when it lost its political potential. The nation-state with all its elements reduces the citizenship into membership of the national community, which produce exclusion of all the others. Such a conception is failed attempt to establish a political subject. I believe that we need to think of citizenship as a political concept as defined by (in the first place) H. Arendt, É. Balibar, J. Habermas, S. Mezzadra and in Slovenia M. Pajnik and A. Kurnik. We need to think about citizenship as acting in the public sphere, as vita activa: citizenship refers to thinking and acting as a public rather than a private matter (I. Kant) and is dealing with an ear for the world, is the responsibility for future generations which inherit the state of the world. In this way, the practicing of citizenship is not a private activity of maximization of happiness but engagement on the foundations of care for all. (Arendt) The politics of citizenship is in a communicative engagement of active people working in the public deliberation as a process of rationalization of the debate. (Habermas) We need to invent new concept of citizenship where modes of belonging are founded on the development of citizenship, and not vice versa (Balibar). This includes the right of entry and residence, work, education, political participation in any country for everyone, not as (neo)liberal principle of "free choice" but as real dissemination and respect for human rights, which requires the rebalancing of the rights of all citizens, co-living in a particular country (community), and thus represents a fundamental ethical requirement for radical political equality. This indicates the citizenship is rather a process, practice, activity than a concluded form. It is always in the making.
B.03 Paper at an international scientific conference
COBISS.SI-ID: 1115757