Jan Nederveen Pieterse Lecture: Globalisation, Populism and Trump

While the media obsesses over the man, what about the nation’s fractures — decades of propaganda, ideological performance and political deceit? Do American populism, authoritarian conservatism, signal the decay of its civilization? Does Make America Great Again fix what’s broken — or expose just how broken it is?

In a lecture spanning history and politics, Professor Jan Nederveen Pieterse will explore the structural frailties in the American state of affairs. He will discuss the ideological and performative elements of MAGA, his view on the 80 years of Cold War propaganda, bipartisan deceptions, and the question of populism vs authoritarian conservatism.

Bio

Jan Nederveen Pieterse’s ancestors were born and lived in Java, Sumatra, Makassar, Goa, Ceylon and Japan, for over two hundred years. He studied BA Anthropology and MA Sociology at the University of Amsterdam, then his second MA in World System Studies at State University of New York at Binghamton, and received a PhD at Radboud University in Nijmegen.

He read Urban Studies Research in Tunisia, Development Studies in Ghana, World-System Studies in the US, Multiculturalism and Islam Research in the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Turkey, the UK and the US, research on South and North East Asia, and China.

Jan Nederveen Pieterse is a Distinguished Professor of Global Studies and Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and specialises in Globalisation, Political Economy and Development Studies.

He taught Sociology at the University of Cape Coast in Ghana, the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, Freiburg University, National University of Malaysia, Maastricht University, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Amsterdam. He is the author or co-editor of 30 books and edits a book series with Palgrave MacMillan and Routledge.