Recognition Struggles and Political Inequality: Mapping Contours and Consequences of Urban Political Culture

• In Event: 3558 - Political Culture, Trust and Civic Engagement

Abstract

The political culture of a city manifests in patterns of symbolic inequality; urban political culture is deeply implicated in questions of whose agendas predominate, whose repertoires resonate, and ultimately whose voices matter in the city. Public meetings are an overlooked arena of struggle over political recognition and shared identity, where movements and individuals engage their city councils in public to assert their agency and standing, to symbolically claim their right to the city. This study of 544 people speaking to two city councils tracks the cultural dimension of contests for power and attention in urban political arenas, identifying factors that condition people's chances of being recognized, ignored, or shamed. Synthesizing traditions of Durkheim and Weber to sharpen the conceptual tools of resonance and discursive opportunity structure, it measures momentary collective effervescence to map enduring patterns of social closure. Logistic regression on coded qualitative observation shows stark differences between the two cities in the structure of who participates, who is recognized by council and audience, and who is ignored. Patterns in the relative resonance of movement mobilization, emotional speech, and field-specific forms of cultural capital reveal distinct dynamics of recognition and exclusion in each city, opening a path for further analysis of the relationship between cultural struggle and political inequality.

Author

• Dmitri S. Seals, University of California-Berkeley