ABSTRACT
Late-nineteenth-century American populism has been the object of countless scholarly analyses, yet there is still no agreement on its character and historical impact. This chapter presents the concepts of cultural theory to sketch an alternative account of the Populist insurgency that reconciles aspects of Populist thought and behavior that have hitherto been seen as inconsistent or anomalous. Most of the scholarship on populism can be placed into one of three general schools of thought: progressivism, liberal exceptionalism, and New Left historiography. The most complex formulation of the progressive thesis is found in the works of Norman Pollack. Initially, Pollack portrayed populism as a forward-looking, “radical” political uprising that could have transformed the United States “in a socialist direction.” The chapter discusses cultural theory by examining the rhetoric and social interactions of individuals who formed the Farmers’.
