Authoritarian Populism and Social Discomfort in Everyday Life

Abstract Sociology brings cultural and performative explanations to studies of populism and democracy. My research contributes to this trend by introducing feminist ethnomethodology into studying authoritarian populism and explaining its interactional mechanisms. I find that authoritarian populism unfolds as intensified boundary work in everyday life. Based on 96 in-depth interviews and ten months of urban bus ethnography in Istanbul, Turkey, I explain how this intense boundary work produces social discomfort in daily life through orienting toward, assessing in terms of, and enforcing conformity against a normative and binary populist mentality. Revealing this process explicates why civilian disciplinary actions intensify along with formal state repression. Regime loyalists and ethnic majorities experience and manage social discomfort more leniently than regime opponents and marginalized communities who are also dealing with the fear of state and civilian threats. There are three ways of negotiating social discomfort. Distancing from previously taken-for-granted interactions is widespread; marginalized communities censor the presentation of self, and regime loyalists display symbols of power reflecting the “native and national” mentality. The findings of this article suggest that social discomfort is a common denominator for prolonged authoritarian populism(s).