Engaged Readings: Living Right. Far-Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe
About the event
We invite you to the “Engaged Readings” seminar around Agnieszka Pasieka’s book Living Right. Far-Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe.
About the book:
Living Right is an in-depth analysis of ideas and practices driving diverse forms of far-right activism among young people from various backgrounds. The author shows how right-wing social movements offer their participants a promise of brotherhood, purpose, and a moral calling to sacrifice. She also demonstrates how far-right ideas are understood and enacted by participants with different life experiences.
The book is based on field research conducted by the author among youth in Italy, Poland, and Hungary. Pasieka sketches memorable portraits of students, workers, entrepreneurs, musicians, and activists from the affluent middle class who found refuge on the far right. By presenting a thorough analysis of radical communities and nationalist networks across Europe, she shows that the key to their success lies in connecting the local with the transnational. The author also reconstructs right-wing moral ideas, challenging common assumptions about the right.
About the discussants:
- prof. Agnieszka Pasieka – Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Montreal. Author of Hierarchy and Pluralism: Living Religious Difference in Catholic Poland (Palgrave, 2015) and Living Right: Far-Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe (Princeton University Press, 2024), as well as numerous scholarly publications on religious pluralism, religious and ethnic minorities, multiculturalism, postsocialist transformation and, more recently, far-right movements, transnational nationalism and fascism. Her new research project concerns far-right environmental politics.
- dr hab. Roman Chymkowski – Assistant Professor in the Department of Contemporary Culture IKP UW, and since 2024 Director of IKP. Cultural studies scholar and sociologist, he researches contemporary culture with particular interest in postcolonial, decolonial and postdependency studies and the social contexts of producing and distributing knowledge, especially scientific and popular-scientific knowledge. Author of the monograph Nietożsamości. Tillion, Fanon, Bourdieu, Derrida i dylematy dekolonizacji (2019) and Autobiografie lekturowe studentów (2011).
