‘Loud and proud’: Politics and passion in the English Defence League

Professor Hilary Pilkington, University of Manchester
Thursday 3 March, 4 pm - 6 pm, W/222
Production Team: tbc

Seminar synopsis

This talk draws on a three-year study of grassroots (especially youth) activism in the English Defence League. The EDL is widely considered to be a violent Islamophobic and racist organisation. This presentation uses the ethnographic approach underpinning the research to uncover the meanings grassroots activists themselves attach to the movement. In particular it explores the relationship between EDL activism and the external political environment. It illustrates how EDL activists experience the external political realm as a politics of silencing in which the expression of their views, as well as government policy, are constrained by the application of the ‘racism label’. This compounds a wider disengagement from the formal political sphere and a denial of the ‘political’ nature of activism, which has much in common with a disavowal of politics among the population more broadly. Activism in the EDL provides individuals with a way of cutting through the politics of silencing and finding a political voice. In contrast to the formal political realm characterised as a site of compliant listening, duplicitous chatter or meaningless debate, EDL activism is experienced as a space to ‘tell it like it is’ and to stand ‘loud and proud’. The talk will also raise questions about the implications of this for our understanding of the role of deliberation, consensus, conflict and dissensus in contemporary democracy.

Professor Hilary Pilkington

Hilary Pilkington is Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester. She has a long standing research interest in youth and youth cultural practices, post-socialist societies and qualitative, especially, ethnographic research methods. She has been coordinator of a number of large, collaborative research projects including the FP7 MYPLACE project on young people’s political engagement and activism. Most recently she is co-author of: Punk in Russia: Cultural mutation from the ‘useless’ to the ‘moronic’ (Routledge, 2014); and Russia’s Skinheads: Exploring and Rethinking Subcultural Lives (Routledge, 2010). She is co-editor of Radical Futures? Youth, Politics and Activism in Europe, Oxford: Wiley (Sociological Review Monograph Series) (April 2015).

Tickets

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Directions and Parking

There is a pay and display car park outside Wentworth Nucleus. Click here for or a map and details

Room W/222 is located on the first floor of Wentworth College Nucleus. As you enter Wentworth reception head straight through the double doors and then up the stairs on your right to the first floor. Turn left and follow the corridor until you see W/222 set back from the corridor on your left.

Interview with Professor Hilary Pilkington

Available after the event.