Dark Durkheimianism: What the ethno‐symbolic approach misses

Abstract

AbstractDrawing on the neo‐Durkheimian cultural sociology of Jeffrey Alexander and Anthony Smith's ethno‐symbolic approach, Schertzer and Woods argue that contemporary ‘populist’ movements in France, the US and the UK are better understood as ‘ethno‐nationalist’ movements. In this, they join a recent spate of revisionist work that emphasises the role of ethno‐nationalism and White supremacism in the historical trajectories of these supposedly ‘civic’ nations. The central weakness of this approach and of their argument is that it detaches symbolic struggles from material ones and in‐group solidarity from out‐group violence. Here, Bourdieu's theory of class‐ification struggles and the dark Durkheimianism of the mid‐20th century provides a helpful supplement.