Anna Schwenck’s research lies at the intersection of cultural and political sociology. She is particularly interested in how cultural understandings, be they transnational or locally specific, shape political behaviour.
The concept flexible authoritarianism coined by her captures the resonances between authoritarian rule and neoliberalism. Her monograph Flexible Authoritarianism. Cultivating Ambition and Loyalty in Russia(published by Oxford University Press) shows how winners of globalization come to support authoritarianism. It received the American Sociological Association’s Mary Douglas Prize for Best Book in the Sociology of Culture in 2024. It was shortlisted for the 2026 European Studies Book Award by the Council for European Studies and the 2025
Her work is also characterized by a focus on music. It interrogates how art shapes protest as an aesthetic means of expression and mobilization. It further investigates the conditions under which artifacts, such as popular music videos, help to justify and normalize political claims. Most recently, it zooms in on how people align their taste with societal scripts that promise authentic self-realization.
Lending itself to both a form of government (Herrschaft) and group organization or leadership styles that favor obedience over debate, authoritarianism has made a comeback in recent years...
Protesters often find themselves opposing the state or corporations. Usually they lack the material and symbolic resources the latter have at their disposal; yet, as my research examines, protesters can draw on alternative sources of symbolic power, such as images or popular music....
By legitimation I mean the processes through which political rule becomes tolerated or supported by different groups of people, temporarily resulting in the shared belief that politico-economic arrangements are righteous...
I believe that social researchers must cultivate genuine interest in people’s lives and everyday struggles in order to develop concepts that adequately explain social life...
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