Urban-Rural Attachment and Fundamental Political Orientations

• In Event: Mobilization, Organizations and Place

Abstract

We explore the contrast between urban, less urban, and rural areas by examining the extent to which populations express varying degrees of attachment to the places where they live. Place attachment turns out to be a major component of life satisfaction (Fried 1984, 82). Our suggestion, anchored in decades of social scientific observation and research, is that variability in the way policy demands arise across the geography of the national political party system, is related to the degree of place attachment residents express for the locations they reside. Discontent with where one lives, coupled with limited geographic mobility, fuels specific kinds of demands for political change, whereas locations with largely contented populations press a less demanding policy agenda, centering more on preserving present conditions. Suspicion is inevitably directed by the contented toward the demands of the deeply discontented, producing political competition around which political partisanship is formed. Deep discontent leads to progressivism in public policy, embraced in contemporary times by the Democratic Party, while contentment promotes psychological conservatism.

Authors

• James G. Gimpel, University of Maryland, College Park

• Andrew Reeves, Washington University in St. Louis