Introduction: The 2016 Brexit referendum and Trump election

Abstract

Global narratives about the 2016 US presidential election and the UK referendum highlight rupture—liberal democracy in crisis. Yet some observers interpret this moment to be business as usual writ large—a display of racial, class, and gender injustices that have long betrayed democratic ideals. Contributors to this special AE Forum explore both perspectives as they probe the disorientation many feel and address issues such as the politics of lying, voters’ personal perspectives, varieties of populism, limitations of common media frames, demographic reductionism, reconfigurations of class politics, and the temporalities of cosmopolitanism. This political moment challenges anthropologists to unsettle our discipline, especially by paying close attention to contradictions within liberal representative democracy and by listening to those who imagine alternative political and economic futures.

Keywords and key words in AE

“…For 2017, the results are clearly influenced by the two forums published in AE that year: “Sidney Mintz and His Legacy,” edited by associate editor Kevin Yelvington (), and “Brexit, Trump, and Anthropology,” edited by associate editor Jeanette Edwards, with Angelique Haugerud and Shanti Parikh (Edwards, Haugerud, and Parikh ). The latter forum in particular produced several dominant words, including Brexit (used six times as a keyword and six in titles), Trump (used four times as a keyword and four times in titles), United States (used six times as a keyword in this forum, of a total of eight in this year), and United Kingdom (used three times as a keyword), as well as class (used five times as a keyword and in one article title in the forum, of a total of seven), race (used four times as a keyword in the forum, of a total of five), and nation and nationalism (used twice in titles and twice as a keyword in the forum, of a total of 10).…”

Towards an anthropology of global inequalities and their local manifestations: social anthropology in 2017

“…While we ought to be careful not to attribute singular explanations to votes like ‘Brexit’ or the victory of Donald Trump in the USA (Edwards et al . ), ethnographic work on far‐right movements makes important contributions. Cammelli's () work with the fascist movement CasaPound in Italy, for example, has shown that militants’ perceptions of their belonging to the movement is not grounded in a particular political programme or public ideology.…”

“…Electoral shocks, like the ‘Brexit’ vote in the UK and the election of Donald Trump in the USA (Edwards et al . ), continued to be at the centre of political debate. Elsewhere in Europe, including in Italy (Cammelli ) and Hungary (Thorleifsson ), far‐right movements have been on the rise.…”

“…On the contrary, European fascism and rightwing corporatism have a long history of claiming a particular sort of commons against the rights of transnational capital and against the practices of the liberal state. While we ought to be careful not to attribute singular explanations to votes like 'Brexit' or the victory of Donald Trump in the USA (Edwards et al 2017), ethnographic work on far-right movements makes important contributions. Cammelli's (2017) work with the fascist movement CasaPound in Italy, for example, has shown that militants' perceptions of their belonging to the movement is not grounded in a particular polit ical programme or public ideology.…”

The Jury Is Out: An Ethnographic Study of Lay Participation in the Norwegian Legal System

“…At a time when populist and right‐wing political sentiment in Europe and the United States has been fueled by concerns about social inequality, security, the fragility of national identity, and the vulnerabilities of democracy (Edwards, Haugerud, and Parikh ), lay participation in legal systems has emerged as a significant and timely subject of study (Bornstein et al. ; Derrick Hodge and Little ; Kernaghan ).…”