HOW CAN WE TALK POLITICS ACROSS THE POST-2016 DIVIDE? Dr. Sherrill Stroschein Reader in Politics, University College London; ISRF Mid-Career Fellow 2017-18
D
ue to recent events, I refurbished my MSc Democracy courses this year. In fact, I demolished them, tore out the walls and the floor, and had to rebuild from scratch. The year sequence now starts with a session on how we talk about politics in the current age. This is the session that worries me most.
Hard conversations about politics are important to keep a divided democracy together. Moving outside of my theoretical understanding of such conversations, I spent some time this summer engaging in conversations of disagreement, to get the hang of it. Given my research focus on societies divided along ethnic or religious lines, I thought it would be easier than it was. Something has increased the distance between those I used to know and myself – a process of polarisation. This piece considers polarisation in some theoretical and practical terms. Can we talk across our divided identity camps after the divisive votes of 2016 in the US and the UK? We have to try. The attacks on the status quo brought by the 2016 elections tend to have two lines of explanation: economics versus culture or ideology. In my field of Political Science, several analysts have chosen to focus on one or the other, engaging in heated debates over which matters more: a) economic disadvantage, or b) culture/ideology, including potential racism. In the midst of this fray, there is some research indicating how economics and culture might interrelate. The sociologist Susan Olzak outlined how conflict can emerge between racial and ethnic groups 23
