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Identity Politics and Local Political Culture: The Politics of Gender, Race, Class and Religion in Comparative Perspective
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Our analysis of the national survey data showed that each identity variable we studied – gender, race, class and religion – had a statistically significant relationship with one or more of our dependent variables (political participation, ideology, and opinion about immigrants). But more importantly, in our study of those same relationships in the community samples, we found that place does matter. The relationships discovered between identities and political outcomes in the community samples deviated markedly, in some cases, from the relationships observed between those same variables in the national sample. Based on these findings, we concluded that “place matters” and should be taken into account in making generalizations about identity politics, especially at the sub-national level of local communities. Finally, in an effort to assess why place matters, we drew from the literature on political culture to construct a New Political Culture (NPC) index. That index measures such community characteristics as the extent of social diversity, nontraditional families and gender roles, and acceptance of gays and lesbians, so we expected that it would be positively correlated with a community’s level of liberalism, electoral and political protest activity and pro-immigrant opinion and negatively correlated with conservatism. Our results, admittedly based on non-rigorous graphical evidence, showed that it was. We also believed that variations in local political culture, as measured by the NPC Index, might help to explain why the magnitude and direction of relationships between the identity variables and political outcomes varied from community to community. Here, based on the same kinds of graphical evidence, our results were mixed. For example, found that whites become more likely and religious people less likely to engage in high levels of political protest with a shift from traditional (low NPC) to non-traditional (high NPC) environments. Variations in local political culture do not appear to be associated, however, with variations in the effects of gender and social class on protest activity. Despite the non-random character of our sample of communities and the limitations of our methods and measures, we think our study contributes some interesting and intriguing findings about the relationships between local culture, identities, and political outcomes in U.S. urban communities. We also believe our study demonstrates the potential of the Social Capital Benchmark Survey as a rich resource for comparative urban research. It is one that allows scholars to answer different questions about urban political life, as well as the different and higher-order kinds of questions raised by the logic of comparative social inquiry.
REFERENCES
Abdelal, Bawi, Yoshiko M. Herrera, Alastair Iain Johnston and Terry Martin. 2001. “Treating
Identity as a Variable: Measuring the Content, Intensity, and Contestation of Identity.” Paper prepared for presentation at APSA, August 30 – September 2, 2001, San Francisco (August).
Achen, Christopher H, and W. Phillips Shively. 1995. Cross-Level Inference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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| | Authors: DeLeon, Richard. and Naff, Katherine. |
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Our analysis of the national survey data showed that each identity variable we studied – gender,
race, class and religion – had a statistically significant relationship with one or more of our
dependent variables (political participation, ideology, and opinion about immigrants). But more
importantly, in our study of those same relationships in the community samples, we found that
place does matter. The relationships discovered between identities and political outcomes in the
community samples deviated markedly, in some cases, from the relationships observed between
those same variables in the national sample. Based on these findings, we concluded that “place
matters” and should be taken into account in making generalizations about identity politics,
especially at the sub-national level of local communities.
Finally, in an effort to assess why place matters, we drew from the literature on political culture
to construct a New Political Culture (NPC) index. That index measures such community
characteristics as the extent of social diversity, nontraditional families and gender roles, and
acceptance of gays and lesbians, so we expected that it would be positively correlated with a
community’s level of liberalism, electoral and political protest activity and pro-immigrant
opinion and negatively correlated with conservatism. Our results, admittedly based on non-
rigorous graphical evidence, showed that it was. We also believed that variations in local
political culture, as measured by the NPC Index, might help to explain why the magnitude and
direction of relationships between the identity variables and political outcomes varied from
community to community. Here, based on the same kinds of graphical evidence, our results
were mixed. For example, found that whites become more likely and religious people less likely
to engage in high levels of political protest with a shift from traditional (low NPC) to non-
traditional (high NPC) environments. Variations in local political culture do not appear to be
associated, however, with variations in the effects of gender and social class on protest activity.
Despite the non-random character of our sample of communities and the limitations of our
methods and measures, we think our study contributes some interesting and intriguing findings
about the relationships between local culture, identities, and political outcomes in U.S. urban
communities. We also believe our study demonstrates the potential of the Social Capital
Benchmark Survey as a rich resource for comparative urban research. It is one that allows
scholars to answer different questions about urban political life, as well as the different and
higher-order kinds of questions raised by the logic of comparative social inquiry.
REFERENCES
Abdelal, Bawi, Yoshiko M. Herrera, Alastair Iain Johnston and Terry Martin. 2001. “Treating
Identity as a Variable: Measuring the Content, Intensity, and Contestation of Identity.” Paper
prepared for presentation at APSA, August 30 – September 2, 2001, San Francisco (August).
Achen, Christopher H, and W. Phillips Shively. 1995. Cross-Level Inference. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
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