Blue State Blues: Regionality, Racial Meanings, and Reactions in the Construction of Political Identity

• In Event: 1284 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 18. Race, Ethnicity and Politics

Abstract

Political identities are not just the outcomes of identification with partisan labels. And they are not merely activated while making decisions in the voting booth. They are constructed through the cultural relationships that people form with political categories in the dramaturgy of daily social life. These relationships take shape through people’s engagement with narratives, memories, vocabularies, and ideas throughout their participation in social and political life. This study seeks to understand political identity construction and its relationship to social factors such as racial inequality, regional contexts, and current events through the ways that people make meaning amid the dilemmas and routines of daily life. To advance dynamic understandings of political identity, the current manuscript draws on an in-depth ethnographic case study of grassroots political actors in the Northeastern United States. The findings demonstrate how participants make sense of themselves and others through positioning themselves in relation to the dominant Democratic party elites in their regions, through their organization’s orientation toward racial issues and their use of racial meanings, and in reaction to largescale political events. The study concludes by demonstrating how these insights advance sociological understandings of race, place, and politics and implications for future research.

Author

• Michael Rosino, University of Connecticut