CFP - Populism: a historiographic category?
Deadline: 15 June 2013
Populism is a category which is often abused in public discourse nowadays.
For this reason, it is a category historians will have to face more and more frequently.
In spite of this, it is undeniable that the issue is usually looked at from the perspective of political science or cultural studies, clearly dominated by a need for conceptualization and abstraction of the category.
As some scholars have pointed out, the clear difficulty in reaching a unique and unitary definition of the phenomenon shows how indefinite its outline is and how problematic it is to ascribe different experiences to a single ideal-type.
This limit is clearly reflected in the difficulty of historical disciplines to thematize the phenomenon. Nonetheless, the study of historical cases is a necessary preliminary task. This also demonstrates the importance of creating a link between the reflections of political scientists, sociologists and philosophers and those of historians. Furthermore, it also shows the need to set up a critical debate on how historical disciplines can contribute to a better understanding of this category.
Four bi-monthly workshops on the subject will be organized in Florence (Italy) during 2013-14, under the sponsorship of the Italian Society for the Study of Contemporary History (SISSCo).
