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Profile

Main research areas and topics: Right-wing populism research, qualitative methods, political sociology, sociology of time, sociology of science and social theory

Philipp Rhein studied sociology, European ethnology/cultural anthropology and gender studies in Freiburg, Jerusalem and Munich. As a student assistant at the Institute of Sociology in Munich (Chair of Prof. Dr. Stephan Lessenich), he was responsible for the research project "Politische Lebenswelten in München. Why people (don't) vote". Philipp Rhein also worked at the Institute for Social Science Research - ISF Munich. Here he focused on research into digitalization and work practices in small and medium-sized enterprises and the sociological evaluation of the IG Metall trade union development project (GEP). Philipp Rhein was a lecturer at the Chair of Political Sociology of Social Inequality at the LMU Munich, the Munich University of Applied Sciences and the DHBW. He teaches Qualitative Methods of Social Research and Political Sociology of Right-Wing Populism Research. Since 2018, Philipp Rhein has been a doctoral fellow in the Hans Böckler doctoral program "Right-wing populist social policy and exclusionary solidarity" at the University of Tübingen.

Right-wing time relations. Württemberg AfD voters' experience of time and ideas of the end times

The rise of right-wing populism is a phenomenon of late modernity. It is characterized by a profound distortion of social time culture and the fear of an 'end of history' is one of its powerful self-descriptions. This is how the late-modern experience of a loss of historical orientation, darkened future horizons, accelerated time and broad present tense is summed up. In the panorama of this contemporary crisis, the success of right-wing populism is attributed to its supposedly backward-looking program and ideology. It is assumed that right-wing populist parties and movements serve a demand for a consciousness of time that glorifies the past and fears the future. Their connection to the current nostalgia boom becomes an anti-democratic, nationalist and authoritarian lure.
In his dissertation, Philipp Rhein examines right-wing populism from a temporal perspective. At the center of the work is a sociological analysis of narrative interviews with AfD voters, primarily from Württemberg. However, instead of finding nostalgic-reactionary orientations, the work discovers apocalyptic and apocalyptic ideas that are charged with pronounced self-victimization. The time consciousness of right-wing populist AfD voters presents itself as a chiliastic utopia: AfD voters imagine end-time catastrophic conditions in which they experience themselves as victims but at the same time as elites.
These empirical results are interpreted as an expression of a crisis in the temporality of late modernity. Right-wing populism is thus understood as an attempt to overcome the loss of a political and historical index of direction and exhausted social temporal structures. The work makes it clear that right-wing populism is possibly less a nostalgic-reactionary project, but rather one of dropouts from the late-modern conditions of the times, who above all refuse to engage in democratic negotiations about the future.


Supervisor:
Prof. Dr. Jörg Strübing (University of Tübingen)
Prof. Dr. Matthias Möhring-Hesse (University of Tübingen)

Editorship

  • Rhein, Philipp (2023): Right-wing time relations. A sociological analysis of concepts of the end of time in right-wing populism. Exclusionary solidarity of the right. Frankfurt/Main: Campus.
  • Sorce, Giuliana; Rhein, Philipp; Lehnert, Daniel; Kaphegyi, Tobias (eds.) (2022): Exclusionary solidarity of the right. Wiesbaden: Springer.

Journal articles

  • Rhein, Philipp (2022): "Negatively privileged instead of declassified. The other resentment of AfD voters", Sozialer Sinn, Vol. 23/1, pp. 49-71.

  • Rhein, Philipp (2022): "Non-populist populists. An empirical study on the orientations of AfD voters", Soziale Welt, vol. 73/1, pp. 105-133.

  • Huchler, Norbert; Rhein, Philipp (2017): "Arbeitshandeln und der digitale Wandel von KMU - Die Rolle des Menschen und die Grenzen der Formalisierung 4.0", Arbeit. Zeitschrift für Arbeitsforschung, Arbeitsgestaltung und Arbeitspolitik, vol. 26/3-4, pp. 287-314.

Book contributions

  • Rhein, Philipp; Möhring-Hesse, Matthias (2022): Commonality in frustration. How Exclusionary Solidarity Exploits Disappointed Solidarity, in: G. Sorce, P. Rhein, D. Lehnert & T. Kaphegyi (eds.), Exclusionary Solidarity of the Right, Wiesbaden: Springer, pp. 215-236.

  • Rhein, Philipp (2021): "Mir wirds scho auslange. That means nothing other than après moi la déluge. How can you talk like that." Decadence as a conjunctive time orientation among AfD voters, in: B. Blättel-Mink (ed.), Gesellschaft unter Spannung. Proceedings of the 40th Congress of the German Sociological Association 2020.https://publikationen.soziologie.de/index.php/kongressband_2020/article/view/1329

  • Rhein, Philipp; Lenger, Alexander; Gengnagel, Vincent (2021): Pierre Bourdieu as a public intellectual, in: S. Selke et al. (eds.), Handbook of Public Sociology. Springer VS: Wiesbaden, online first: https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-658-16991-6_14-1

  • Rhein, Philipp (2018): Can schools provide "education after Auschwitz"? Notes on schools as a place of learning and historical-political education, in: H. Knothe and R. Sigel (eds.): "...because I was so surprised myself that I knew so little."A study of teaching about the fate of the European Roma and Sinti during the Holocaust (Dachauer Diskurse, vol. 10). Munich: Herbert Utz Verlag, pp. 89-102.

  • Lessenich, Stephan; Rhein, Philipp (2017): Socially and collectively binding decisions. On the relationship between politics and the state in Pierre Bourdieu, in: M. Hirsch & R. Voigt (eds.), Symbolische Gewalt. Politics, power and the state in Pierre Bourdieu. Baden-Baden: Nomos, pp. 55-74.

  • Lenger, Alexander; Rhein, Philipp (2014): Das wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Feld und das Feld der Macht, in: K. Hirte, S. Thieme and W. O. Ötsch (eds.), Research! What Research? On truth, theories and belief as well as economic theories. Marburg: Metropolis-Verlag, pp. 319-345.

Further publications

09/2020
"That people rummage in garbage cans at the airport to collect bottles while young snotty kids demonstrate with Fridays for Future and fly to New York". Decadence as a subjunctive experience of time among West German AfD voters
40th Congress of the German Sociological Association ("Society under Tension"), Berlin


3/2019
Political competence and the damage to democracy.
40 years of 'The subtle differences' - On the topicality of Pierre Bourdieu's social theory in cultural sociological inequality research (Vienna)


1/2018
"I can't put a cross in the box if I don't know what it's all about". On abstention and the social division of political competence.
Colloquium at the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation (Munich)


9/2017
Political competence and exclusive solidarity. Socio-theoretical perspectives on extremism of the center.
Summer School "Right-wing populist social policy and exclusionary solidarity" (Tübingen)


8/2017
From Deprivation to Populism. Locating the Social Origins of the Current Populist Upheaval.
Conference of the Nordic Political Science Association (NoPSA) (Odense, Denmark)


6/2017
Political lifeworlds in Munich - Why people (don't) vote.
Project presentation and panel discussion at the LMU Munich.