“THAT IS NOT WHO WE ARE! Populism and Stories of Peoplehood,” Lecture 1 with Rogers Smith, University of Pennsylvania

EP&E 2018 CASTLE LECTURE SERIES

Professor Rogers Smith, the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Associate Dean for Social Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, will deliver three Castle Lectures this year on the domestic politics of the global economy on October 23, October 24, and October 25th. The Yale Program in Ethics, Politics and Economics (EP&E) is sponsoring the lecture series which will take place at the Institution for Social Policy Studies (ISPS).

Lecture I: “A Cacophony of Stories”
As both right-leaning and left-leaning movements labeled “populist” have surged in countries around the globe, analysts have debated the definition of populism and the economic and cultural causes of this surge. Less attention has been paid to the role of proliferating, conflicting “stories of peoplehood” in generating the appeal of nationalistic populist narratives, or to the content of the stories of who the people are, and why they deserve to govern, that these populist movements advance.

Note on the Castle Lectures: Each year the Dean of Yale College appoints a Castle Lecturer in Ethics, Politics and Economics to deliver a series of lectures to promote awareness of and sensitivity to ethical issues facing individuals in complex modern societies. Intended to foster interdisciplinary reflection on the moral foundations of society and government, the lectures were endowed by Mr. John K. Castle to honor his ancestor the Reverend James Pierpont, one of the University’s original founders. Yale University Press co-sponsors the lectures and publishes each set of lectures as a book.