That Is Not Who We Are!: Populism and Peoplehood

Castle Lecture Series

by Rogers M. Smith

How can liberals offer “stories of peoplehood” that can compete with illiberal populist and nationalist stories?

Rogers Smith has long argued for the importance of “stories of peoplehood” in constituting political communities. By enabling a people to tell others and themselves who they are, such stories establish the people’s identity and values and guide its actions. They can promote national unity and unity of groups within and across nations. Smith argues that nationalist populists have done a better job than liberals in providing stories of peoplehood that advance their worldview: the nation as ethnically defined, threatened by enemies, and blameless for its troubles, which come from its victimization by malign elites and foreigners. Liberals need to offer their own stories expressing more inclusive values. Analyzing three liberal stories of peoplehood—those of John Dewey, Barack Obama, and Abraham Lincoln—Smith argues that all have value and all are needed, though he sees Lincoln’s, based on the Declaration of Independence, as the most promising.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction

176 pages, Hardcover

Published June 23, 2020

Reviews

[Russell Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unlike many books written by academic defenders of liberal democracy against populism, Rogers Smith's book attempts to do something important: identify just what it is about "populism" (which Smith doesn't nail down to a single definition, but basically consists of any kind of political rhetoric or positioning that tells a story about the identity or interests of the common people and why they are being threatened/cheated/misunderstood by some group of elites) that democratically works, and then figure out the sort of "patriotic" stories which could be told which would provide the same appeal without challenging liberal democratic principles. While Smith's multiple categorizations could be challenged from any number of directions, I found them analytically helpful. It's good to keep in mind that stories of peoplehood, as he prefers to call them, always have to have a material economic theme, a political power theme, and a constitutive theme; it's also good to think of alternative, more liberal-friendly stories of peoplehood as nonetheless having to satisfy the three "Rs": they must be culturally resonant, they must provide diverse expressions of respect, and they must be "reticulatable:" that is, they must be able to organically adapt to a shifting plurality of expressions of identity. It is to Smith's credit that, following through on these ideas, he notes the relative weakness of such liberal democratic stories of American identity as a Deweyesque democratic project, or as a constituting of a single people, a least in comparison to the better (and, in his hands, somewhat radical) idea of seeing it as a Lincolnian ever-expanding project of freedom. Anyway, this is a thoughtful book much worth reading.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An important perspective on the importance of self-defining stories in fortifying liberal democracy against its competitors.

[Doug · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really wish everyone would read this book.