The Forum: Second Thoughts on Presidential Politics

In this essay, we confront the “conventional wisdoms” promoted throughout this long presidential campaign. By conventional wisdoms, we mean the common knowledge of politics—the things that commentators and analysts forward as taken‐for‐granted assertions and beliefs. We will revisit just a few of the campaign season’s conventional wisdoms and review them with a sociological eye. In so doing, we find that in politics, as in most other areas, conventional wisdom can be a risky source of knowledge.     

Toward a Viable Progressive Third Party in 2020 and Beyond1

Creating a strong, influential third party has been an abiding aspiration on the American left, and were this goal to be achieved, it could be a great boon to subordinate groups in the United States. Yet widespread doubts persist, even among progressives that this is desirable, and especially that it is possible. Here, I briefly review compelling reasons for thinking otherwise; I then consider in some depth the potential for starting to build a viable left third party leading up to and after the pivotal 2020 election. In doing so, I go beyond the existing literature on third parties, which has yet to reflect systematically on progressive third party prospects in this period. Specifically, I assess how the emerging political environment may shape left third-party building, and I evaluate ongoing and developing attempts by key groups engaged in that effort. I find a distinct tension between conditions encouraging progressives to reform versus abandon the Democratic Party, and I identify one alternative party-building tendency that seems most able to exploit the latter impulse due to its already established electoral viability. Last, I highlight relevant questions that remain for activists hoping to create an effective national left third party.     

Preface: Foresight in 2020: Race and Gender in the Upcoming Election

This essay introduces contributions to a special issue of Sociological Forum titled “Foresight in 2020: Race and Gender in the Upcoming Election.” All articles in the issue can be accessed at the journal’s website, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/15737861 . They will first appear under the “Early View” tab, and later in volume 35, supplement I.     

A decade after the Reform: political activism of the Chinese of West Kalimantan,Indonesia

Political reform after the departure of President Soeharto’s New Order (1966–1998) provided opportunities for previously oppressed social groups to express their concerns and to demand fair recognition. The results of this newly found freedom have been quite immediately visible in Jakarta, where social and political institutions spearheaded by Chinese originally sprouted. In the regions, political participation of ethnic Chinese has also grown; significantly in those regions with a large Chinese population. In West Kalimantan, the number of Chinese being elected to local parliaments in some regions has doubled. They have also contested numerous direct local executive elections since 2003 and have been successful in winning four posts: a mayor, a district head, a deputy district head, and a deputy governor. By looking at the case of West Kalimantan, this article will examine the factors behind the growth in Chinese political activism, the factors contributing to the success of Chinese candidates in elections, how the Chinese have influenced local and provincial politics, and the challenges they are facing.     

The Politics of Temporality: An Analysis of Leftist Youth Politics and Generational Contention

Based on focus groups and in-depth interviews with young leftist political party activists in Uruguay, this article analyzes the dilemmas faced by young people as they use images from the past to interpret and orient their situation in the present and their aspirations for the future. They are the heirs to a highly romantic image of what it means to be a political activist on the Left; in this sense, the shadow of the radical Sixties and the omnipresent image of armed struggle and military dictatorship define them. But the reality of politics in contemporary democratic Uruguay is that of pressing for incremental and routine social reform inside a ‘Broad Front’ where ideological definitions for the future have become hazy. This paper explores the various ways that young Uruguayan Leftists work to reconcile these different senses of time and how these mediate their relationships with ‘significant generational others’. In so doing, I place the concept of time, of the perceived and socially constructed sense of acting in the current of a particular historical time, at the center of analysis.     

Paradigm Warriors: Regress and Progress in the Study of Contentious Politics

Paradigm warfare is a well-worn way of engaging in the polemics of research, but it frequently reduces paradigms to caricatures and turns complex reports of empirical research into cartoons. This is illustrated by two one-sided accounts of the Chiapas rebellion: one based on a simplistic political opportunity cartoon and the other on a foreshortened culturalist one. Reducing the many-sided (and in some ways ambiguous) approaches of the political process model to a supposedly hegemonic paradigm neglects many substantive contributions and cuts with too broad a stroke at social movements while ignoring the many-branched contributions of research and theory on contentious politics.     

Life politics,nature and the state: Giddens' sociological theory and The Politics of Climate Change

Anthony Giddens' The Politics of Climate Change represents a significant shift in the way in which he addresses ecological politics. In this book, he rejects the relevance of environmentalism and demarcates climate‐change policy from life politics. Giddens addresses climate change in the technocratic mode of simple rather than reflexive modernization. However, Giddens' earlier sociological theory provides the basis for a more reflexive understanding of climate change. Climate change instantiates how, in high modernity, the existential contradiction of the human relationship with nature returns in new form, expressed in life politics and entangled with the structural contradictions of the capitalist state. The interlinking of existential and structural contradiction is manifested in the tension between life politics and the capitalist nation‐state. This tension is key for understanding the failures so far of policy responses to climate change.     

Electing Women of Color: The Role of Campaign Trainings

The increasing racial diversity of women in the United States makes the underrepresentation of women of color in politics an important area for research. To better understand the reasons for the underrepresentation of women of color and how more women of color might be elected in the future, this article presents a case study of a unique campaign training program designed for women of color. The program is the Center for American Women and Politics’ (CAWP) New Jersey Ready to Run® Diversity Initiative. Campaign trainings have proliferated in recent years and seem to play a disproportionate role in women’s election to office. By examining perceptions of the barriers facing women of color and by identifying the mechanisms by which the Diversity Initiative seeks to help women, this article sheds light on the status of women candidates of color and the role of campaign trainings more generally. For political practitioners, this article suggests the utility of creating programs for women of color.     

The Disconnection In Online Politics: the youth political web sphere and US election sites, 2002-2004

In recent years, candidates and other political actors have dramatically increased their presence and activities online. Although the notion of these activities reaching beyond a limited set of early-adopters is relatively new, younger citizens have long been at the forefront of new developments on the web and continue to make up a substantial proportion of those seeking political information online. Given longstanding concern over levels of civic and political engagement among young people, questions concerning what young people seeking information and opportunities for political involvement online might find there are particularly relevant. In particular, we explore political websites that are directly targeted at younger voters (e.g. Rock the Vote and similar sites), websites produced by candidates and political parties, and possible linkages between these two web spheres. Based on content and hyperlink analyses spanning the 2002 and 2004 US election cycles, we find a complex evolution of the online political information environment offered to youth. Although the youth engagement web sphere experienced dramatic growth during this time period, our data also identify a reluctance of many mainstream political actors to speak directly to young people through the web, and a surprising underdevelopment of linkages between youth politics websites and the wider web of political information online. We conclude by considering the implications of these patterns for future research on the role of new media in processes of political communication and engagement.     

The Power of Silver: Age and Identity Politics in the 21st Century

Pensioner political movements emerged in the interwar years in America and Europe. Documentary and empirical analyses confirm the influential role such movements played in helping shape the postwar social security systems of Western societies. Pensioner movements, qua pensioner movements, have failed to retain their influence, despite that “old age” and its demographic significance have become more salient. We propose three explanations for this: the first concerns the failure of old age to connect with the generational ethos of identity politics; the second reflects the nature of the actors now involved in the governance of old age; and the third concerns the individualization of retirement as a phase of life.     

Social Movements and Patronage Politics: Processes of Demobilization and Dual Pressure

Why might social movements be highly contentious at one point in time and demobilize shortly after? Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this article examines the dynamics of demobilization of popular movements in a context of patronage politics. I argue that demobilization in these contexts results from relational processes creating a “dual pressure” stemming “from below” and “from above.” In social environments where patronage is pervasive, poor people develop survival strategies relying on clientelistic arrangements. They participate in a social movement organization (SMO) to voice their rights, but also to address pressing survival needs by gaining access to resources. These expectations of constituents create a pressure “from below” on leaders of an SMO, which respond by securing resources obtained through alliances with national political actors. In turn, these alliances create a pressure “from above,” because local leaders reciprocate this national support by eschewing the organization of collective actions. Drawing on data culled from 12 months of fieldwork on an Argentine peasant movement, this article inspects the interconnections between popular movements and patronage politics to refine our understanding of demobilization processes; contribute to discussions regarding the role of culture on contentious politics; and shed light on current demobilization trends in Latin America.     

The contribution of media consumption to civic participation

A national UK survey (N = 1017) examined the association between media consumption and three indicators of civic participation - likelihood of voting, interest in politics, and actions taken in response to a public issue of concern to the respondent. Multiple regression analysis was used to test the variance explained by media use variables after first controlling for demographic, social and political predictors of each indicator of participation. Media use significantly added to explaining variance in civic participation as follows. In accounting for voting, demographic and political/social factors mattered, but so too did some media habits (listening to the radio and engagement with the news). Interest in politics was accounted for by political/social factors and by media use, especially higher news engagement and lower media trust. However, taking action on an issue of concern was accounted for only by political/social factors, with the exception that slightly fewer actions were taken by those who watched more television. These findings provided little support for the media malaise thesis, and instead were interpreted as providing qualified support for the cognitive/motivational theory of news as a means of engaging the public.     

“It Isn’t in the Curriculum”: World History Teachers’ Views on U.S. Presidential Elections

Abstract

This study examines world history teachers’ attitudes regarding teaching U.S. presidential elections. During interviews with nine teachers, participants emphasized that the competing demands of their classrooms negatively influenced their willingness to teach about the U.S. presidential elections generally, and the 2016 Election specifically. The participants reconsidered their stances on not teaching elections during the interviews but struggled to reconcile their role as world history teachers with their priorities as social studies more generally. While elections are part of the civics curriculum and can be easily associated with history courses, this study suggests that greater attention should be paid to how citizenship practices can be understood through world history classes to promote teaching about elections as part of the curriculum.     

NGOs and Their Vulnerabilities During the Time of Transition: The Case of Poland

This paper focuses on the development of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Poland, as a case study of the sector's development in the Central and Eastern European countries of transition. It is argued that, in this situation, the development and growth of the NGO sector though shaped, as in the West, by a set of legislative, political, economic, cultural, and historical forces, nevertheless is circumscribed by the specific conditions of political transformation. The nature of and the power with which legislative, fiscal, or organizational forces condition the development of the sector varies according to the scale at which they operate (local, national, or international). Moreover, it is argued that the position of NGOs is significantly regulated by the state's political ideology, and the formative and evolving character of the latter translates into instability in states' actions vis-à-vis the nonprofit sector.     

Governance and Economic Transformation in Taiwan: The Role of Politics

This article analyses the strengths and weaknesses of the developmental‐state approach as compared with a broader and more flexible developmental‐governance approach – in relation to economic transformation in a single case country, Taiwan. It argues that both approaches have strong and weak points, and comes down in favour of the view that it is only through a ‘thick’ study of political forces, processes and circumstances that the reasoning behind developmental policies and institutions can be understood and the processes of economic transformation explained.     

Seeing beyond the datasets: the unexploited structure of electoral and institutional data

We propose relational data modeling as a tool for replacing the ad hoc and uncoordinated approaches commonly used throughout the social sciences to gather, store, and disseminate data. We demonstrate relational data modeling using global electoral and political institutional data. We define a relational data model as a map of concepts, their attributes, and the relationships between concepts developed using a formal language and according to a set of rules. To demonstrate the methodology, we design a simple relational data model of six concepts: countries, parties, elections, districts, institutions, and election results. Furthermore, we introduce a data model to solve the particularly vexing issue of party discontinuity (party splits, mergers, and alliances). We show how the solution facilitates computational tasks, such as the calculation of core measures of political phenomena (ex: electoral volatility). Ultimately, a relational data approach will play a central role in collective investments to develop advanced data capabilities, and thereby advance the accuracy, pace, and transparency of scholarship in the social sciences.     

Gating Union: The Politics of Making a Historically Black Community

ABSTRACT

In 1999, Union was officially recognized as a Historic District by the National Register of Historic Places. Although approximately 80 percent of the residents are raced white, Union was identified as a historically black space. The recognition, premised on Union's origins as a town founded by freed slaves in the late nineteenth century, was the culmination of efforts by the Union Community Association. Its members, who are predominantly white, middle class, and newcomers to the area, took on the role of “protecting” their community by gaining official historic recognition, a task that established them as the gatekeepers of history, and black residents as historical artifacts. As Union became established as a historically black community, its social and legal boundaries could act to protect the place against unwanted land developers. While (white) residents took on the role as history's gatekeepers, (black) descendent residents were turned into tangible metonyms for history, authenticating by their presence Union's historic status. Official recognition has allowed the Union Community Association to fence in an oasis of rustic living at the edge of development, while less affluent residents find themselves gated into a stagnant social landscape in which social and economic opportunity has been effectively gated out.     

Ordinary Usage of New Media: Internet Usage via Mobile Phone in Japan

Abstract:  This paper, by analyzing Internet usage via mobile phones in Japan, aims to clarify an aspect of information behavior in present-day Japanese society.
Many discourses on the mobile Internet in Japan, either positive or negative, emphasize its novelty and describe this new media as an exotic phenomenon. These discourses can be divided into two categories. The nationalistic discourses and the moral panic discourses. Both types of discourse have built certain images of social influences of the mobile Internet in the future. However, it would be unwise to conclude that those images of the mobile Internet express the reality of this new medium, simply because they lack empirical ground.
With these points in mind, based on the result of our national survey conducted in 2001, we would like to show the actual status of use of the mobile Internet and discuss that the ordinary usage is a critically important realm to understand the process of social reception of the mobile Internet. As our data shows, although the actual usage of the mobile Internet is not very conspicuous, it gives us a chance to understand how the mobile Internet has been integrated into our everyday lives.     

She Was Born in a Small Town: The Advantages and Disadvantages in Political Knowledge and Efficacy for Rural Girls

Recent work suggests that girls learn more about politics and are more efficacious in places with less conflict and greater homogeneity. Given that rural communities are often more homogeneous than metropolitan areas across several dimensions, this article asks whether young girls growing up in rural communities have higher levels of political knowledge and efficacy than those in more urban, diverse communities. It argues that the average girl benefits from the stronger social bonds between residents in smaller places, but young women who hold minority views about the importance of equality are likely to suffer in their levels of knowledge and efficacy. Being in the minority seems to be particularly difficult for girls in smaller places. This article raises questions about the ways in which gender gaps vary across different places and the varying effects of minority status.