Populism and (Pop) Music

Abstract

This book launches a proposal: to fill some empirical and theoretical gaps that presently exists in populism studies by looking at the potential nexus between populist phenomena and popular culture. It provides a detailed account of the multiple mechanisms linking the production of pop music (as a form of popular culture) to the rise and reproduction of populism. The authors use a case study of Italy to interrogate these mechanisms because of its long-lasting populist phenomena and the contextual importance of pop music. The book’s mixed-methods strategy assesses three different aspects of the potential relationship between pop music and populist politics: the cultural opportunity structure generated and reproduced by the production of music, the strategies political actors use to exploit music for political purposes, and, crucially, the ways fans and ordinary citizens understand the relationship between pop music and politics, and subsequent debates and identities. Moving from the case study, the book in its last chapter offers a more general understanding of the associations between pop music and populism.

Manuela Caiani  - Scuola Superiore Normale 

Bio

Manuela Caiani is Associate Professor in Political Science at the Scuola Normale Superiore and affiliated scholar at the Cosmos Center for Social Movement Studies (SNS) .  Her research focuses on Social Movements and Europeanization; Far Right Politics; Extremism online; Right Wing and Left Wing Populism; Movement-parties; Qualitative methods of social research. She is Convenor of the Standing Group ‘Political Participation and Social Movements’ of the Italian Association for Political Science (SISP) and Co-director of the International Observatory on Social Cohesion and Inclusion-OCIS, https://osservatoriocoesionesociale.eu/. She has directed and collaborated in various international projects (Horizon 2021; Volskwagen Stiftung; Europe for Citizens Program; FP4, FP5, FP7; PRIN; Marie Curie; Research Grant Jubilaumsfonds, ONB; Doctoral TRA Fellowship, START Center, 2009, University of Maryland). She published in, among others, the following journals: Social Movement Studies, EJPR, Mobilization, Acta Politica, West European Politics, Government and Opposition; European Union Politics, South European Society and Politics, RISP and for the following publishers: Oxford University press, Ashgate, Palgrave, Routledge.
Among the most recent publications:
Caiani, M. (2023). Framing and social movements. Discourse Studies, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/14614456231154734
Manuela Caiani and Enrico Padoan (2023), Populism and (Pop) Music, Palgrave
Manuela Caiani and Manès Weisskircher (2022), ‘Anti-Nationalist Europeans and Pro-European Nativists on the Streets: Visions of Europe from the Left to the Far Right’, Social Movement Studies

Enrico Padoan - University of Siena

Bio

Enrico Padoan (PhD, Universidad Católica de Chile) is adjunct professor in Political Science at the University of Tuscia and post-doctoral researcher in Political Science at the University of Siena, where he works in a EU-funded process on institutional trust and deliberative democracy. 
He has extensively focused on populism in comparative perspective in Southern Europe and Latin America; party organization; populism and popular culture. 
He is the author of five monographs, amongst them: Anti-Neoliberal Populisms in Comparative Perspective (Routledge, 2020); Il Movimento 5 Stelle in Prospettiva Comparata (Mimesis, 2022); Populism and (Pop) Music (Palgrave, 2023, with Manuela Caiani). 
Forthcoming: L'operaio e il militare. Lula, Bolsonaro e il Brasile diviso (Castelvecchi; with Matías López and Débora Thomé).