International Political Sociology (2018) 12, 88–107 Collective Discussion: Diagnosing the Present R. B. J. W ALKER University of Victoria R OBBIE S HILLIAM Queen Mary University of London H ELOISE W EBER University of Queensland AND G ITTE D U P LESSIS University of Oulu As students and scholars of global politics, we have been witnessing, par- ticipating in, and feeling the effects of recent global upheavals. These in- clude specific events, such as the election of Trump and the vote for Brexit, but are better understood through their resulting political effects (e.g., pushing back on migration, hardening national borders, denying climate change, reneging on trade deals, gutting the welfare state, increasing re- source extraction, and curtailing rights). Commentators refer to these up- heavals in different ways: a rise in populism, reinvigorated nationalism, the new fascism, a polarization of Right and Left, the end of globaliza- tion, and posttruth politics. These labels have not only generated a great deal of scholarly debate, they have also helped generate multiple energies, including activism, protest, and politicization. Such developments feel at once totally unprecedented but also eerily familiar. More to the point, they have very different manifestations in different parts of the world; indeed, one of the difficulties of the present moment is the lack of analysis about the global ramifications of these upheavals. We want to intervene in this puzzle by tapping into an underlying anxi- ety about how we understand what is currently happening in the world. How do we talk about these present formations without lapsing into nos- talgia, blind panic, or unhelpful predictions? This is not an exercise in mastery—as if that is even possible—but more a reflection on the diffi- culties of speaking about this strange contemporary collusion of power, disenfranchisement, and violence. In keeping with the open-ended ethos that characterizes International Political Sociology, we are interested in how to diagnose these forces in ways that do not singularize, homogenize, or reduce them to something that can be solved once and for all. Man, Citizen, and Political Judgement R. B. J. Walker Yes, so much is going on, to use a necessarily imprecise phrase. Familiar expec- tations are sometimes confirmed. Sometimes structures, processes, and events are disturbingly elusive. I take it that what is most urgently at stake in the present dis- cussion concerns the elusive, though I will want to insist here that attempts to make sense of what seems elusive require more attention to what we take to be famil- iar. I certainly agree that diagnoses of whatever is going on tend to be sketchy at Walker, R. B. J. et al. (2018) Collective Discussion: Diagnosing the Present. International Political Sociology, doi: 10.1093/ips/olx022 © The Author(s) (2018). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Studies Association. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ips/article/12/1/88/4897847 by guest on 22 September 2021