Right populism is opening up a renewed political base for neoliberalism after the global slump of 2008, based on a misdirection of the insecurity deliberately created by years of austerity and restructuring. The challenge of resistance is to build the power from below that can genuinely address the sources of growing insecurity after 35 years of neoliberal rule.

Alan Sears is Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology at Ryerson University and is a long-time activist. His writing includes The Next New Left: A History of the Future (Fernwood) and (with James Cairns) The Democratic Imagination: Envisioning Popular Power in the Twenty-First Century (University of Toronto Press), as well as many pieces of education, sexuality, and social theory.

This lecture is part of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology Fall 2018 Colloquium Series: Populism Today. For more information, please contact Justin Paulson at justin.paulson@carleton.ca.