Nationalism and the far right
June 29 to July 3 (3.00 pm - 5.00 pm)
- 10 hour course by Umut Özkirimli (Lund University - IBEI) at the Barcelona Summer School in Global Politics, Development and Security
Nationalism’s largely unpredicted resurgence is sobering”, writes Gideon Rose, the editor of Foreign Affairs, in his introduction to a special issue on “The New Nationalism”.
Even a hasty list of issues with which we are grappling today would be sufficient to expose the nature of the challenge nationalism poses: the rise of populist nationalism, either on the Left or the Right, and its reflections on mainstream politics, in particular on issues related to security, immigration and austerity; the simultaneous and seemingly paradoxical fragmentation of the European project and its further consolidation as a nation-state writ large with ever-changing “others”; the rise and, at least according to some, the fall of multiculturalism; the changing nature of sovereignty, citizenship, territoriality; and the challenges these trends pose to liberal democracy.
This course will seek to understand the so-called resurgence of nationalism, reflecting on the nature of nationalism today, and its relationship with kindred concepts such as populism, nativism and racism. It will also explore its thorny connection with the far right, both theoretically and empirically, focusing on a few selected case studies.