Home is where the heartland is? Towards a conceptual framework for the politics of place

A remarkably regionally tinted type of populist nationalism is gaining traction in democracies all over the world, mobilizing place resentment in voters who feel their regions have been left behind in some sense. Beside emphasizing the well-known antithesis of ‘the morally good people’ versus ‘the elite’ or ‘the other’, (populist) politicians have developed a tendency to idealize a nostalgic and often rural representation of their home country, while framing urban environments as hotbeds of corruption and depravity. Over twenty years ago, in his book Populism (2000), Paul Taggart coined the term ‘heartland’ to describe the populist representation of an ideal country, and many authors after him adopted his use of the term, but its exact meaning and implications remain fuzzy and ambiguous. Taking Taggart’s definition of the heartland as a starting point, this paper aims to put some much-needed conceptual flesh on the term’s bones, employing an interdisciplinary approach that combines political theory with cultural geography. Based upon a synthesis of both disciplines’ theories and insights, a conceptual framework will be built to analyze ‘heartlands’ as they occur in political discourse. Subsequently, this framework will be applied to Dutch farmers’ protest and political movements to study the ways in which they strive to represent the Netherlands as a rural nation. This research contributes to unpacking the complex ideological connection of politics and place, which is essential in developing a richer understanding of contemporary nationalist populism.