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Podcast: New Books in Political Science
Episode: Sari Hanafi, "Against Symbolic Liberalism: A Plea for Dialogical Sociology" (Liverpool UP, 2025)
Description: In an era of deepening polarization, Sari Hanafi examines how social scientists often reproduce the very injustices they seek to challenge, taking entrenched positions while dismissing alternative perspectives.
He introduces the concept of symbolic liberalism - a contradiction in which individuals espouse classical liberal principles, yet act in politically illiberal ways. This, he argues, has exacerbated the pathologies of late modernity: authoritarianism, economic precarity, and environmental destruction, now all unfolding in a climate where reasonable debate seems increasingly impossible.
Examining key flashpoints of contemporary polarization, Hanafi critiques how symbolic liberalism inflates the universality of rights wh...