The Birth of Digital Populism: Crowd, Power and Postdemocracy in the 21st Century (2015) [EN, IT]

“The Five Star Movement led by Grillo & Casaleggio had an unexpected success in the Italian general elections of February 2013, deeply disrupting the panorama of Italian politics. This book seeks to explore some of the features characterising the emergence of a new political phenomenon: digital populism. We asked Italian and English thinkers from different political and disciplinary backgrounds to contribute to an analysis of some fundamental points behind the rise of populism and the digital relations between masses, power and democracy at the dawn of the twenty-first century. The book features nine interviews carried out between May 2013 and February 2014 with Luciana Parisi, Tiziana Terranova, Lapo Berti, Simon Choat, Godani Paul, Saul Newman, Jussi Parikka, Tony D. Sampson and Alberto Toscano.”

Published in January 2015
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
84 pages

Five Star Movement on Wikipedia
Editors

PDF: English, Italian
Issuu: English, Italian

Guy Standing: The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (2011–) [EN, PL, BR-PT, FR, CN]

“Neo-liberal policies and institutional changes have produced a huge and growing number of people with sufficiently common experiences to be called an emerging class. In this book Guy Standing introduces what he calls the Precariat – a growing number of people across the world living and working precariously, usually in a series of short-term jobs, without recourse to stable occupational identities or careers, stable social protection or protective regulations relevant to them. They include migrants, but also locals.

Standing argues that this class of people could produce new instabilities in society. They are increasingly frustrated and dangerous because they have no voice, and hence they are vulnerable to the siren calls of extreme political parties. He outlines a new kind of good society, with more people actively involved in civil society and the precariat re-engaged. He goes on to consider one way to a new better society — an unconditional basic income for everyone, contributed by the state, which could be topped up through earned incomes.

This is a topical, and a radical book, which will appeal to a broad market concerned by the increasing problems of labour insecurity and civic disengagement.”

Publisher Bloomsbury Academic, London, 2011
ISBN 1849663513, 9781849663519
Creative Commons BY-NC Licence
ix+198 pages

Essay by the author (The Guardian, June 2011)
Excerpts from a seminar with the author (video, United Nations, September 2011)
Interview with the author (James Foley, International Socialist, November 2011)
Essay by the author (OpenDemocracy.net, January 2012)

Reviews: Keith Randle (Work Organisation, Labour & Globalisation, 2011), Gaverne Bennett (Socialist Review, 2011), Arne L Kalleberg & Hazel Conley & David A Spencer (Work, Employment and Society, 2012; Response), Xavier St-Denis (Canadian Rev of Sociology, 2012), Geoff Bailey (International Socialist Review, 2012), Jan Breman (New Left Review, 2013; Response), Catherine Lawlor (Global Discourse, 2013), Chris Deeming (J Social Policy, 2013), Andreas Bieler (Capital & Class, 2013), Kieran Allen (Irish Marxist Review, 2014), Monica Threlfall (E-International Relations, 2015), Dylan Taylor (POA Review, n.d.), Bengt Furåker (Arbetsmarknad & Arbetsli, 2014, SW), Edgar Augusto Valero Julio (Rev Colombiana de Sociologia, 2015, ES), Lech Mikulski (Państwo i Społeczeństwo, 2015, PL), Jean-Pierre Durand (Nouvelle Revue du Travail, 2017, FR), Anne Rodier (Le Monde, 2017, FR).

Publisher (EN)
WorldCat (EN)

The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (English, 2011, updated on 2018-12-29; EPUB)
O Precariado: A nova classe perigosa (BR-Portuguese, trans. Cristina Antunes, rev. Rogério Bettoni, 2013)
Prekariat: nowa niebezpieczna klasa (Polish, trans. Paweł Kaczmarski and Mateusz Karolak, 2014, Introduction & Chapters 1-3, HTML, PDFs, updated on 2021-1-18)
Le précariat: les dangers d’une nouvelle classe (French, trans. Mickey Gaboriaud, 2017, added on 2020-1-18)
Bu wen ding wu chan jie ji (Chinese, trans. Weiren Liu, 2019, added on 2020-1-18)

See also Standing’s A Precariat Charter: From Denizens to Citizens (2014, EPUB, added on 2018-12-29).

The New Face of Digital Populism (2011)

Populist parties and movements are now a force to be reckoned with in many Western European countries. These groups are known for their opposition to immigration, their ‘anti-establishment’ views and their concern for protecting national culture. Their rise in popularity has gone hand-in-hand with the advent of social media, and they are adept at using new technology to amplify their message, recruit and organise.

The online social media following for many of these parties dwarfs the formal membership, consisting of tens of thousands of sympathisers and supporters. This mélange of virtual and real political activity is the way millions of people — especially young people — relate to politics in the 21st century.

This is the first quantitative investigation into these digital populists, based on over 10,000 survey responses from 12 countries. It includes data on who they are, what they think and what motivates them to shift from virtual to real-world activism. It also provides new insight into how populism — and politics and political engagement more generally — is changing as a result of social media.

The New Face of Digital Populism calls on mainstream politicians to respond and address concerns over immigration and cultural identity without succumbing to xenophobic solutions. People must be encouraged to become actively involved in political and civic life, whatever their political persuasion — it is important to engage and debate forcefully with these parties and their supporters, not shut them out as beyond the pale.

Authors: Jamie Bartlett, Jonathan Birdwell, Mark Littler
Published by Demos, London, 7 November 2011
Demos licence (Open Access. Some rights reserved)
ISBN 978-1-906693-86-2
148 pages

publisher
via Gnd

PDF