Politics of Meaning/Meaning of Politics

The 2016 U.S. presidential election revealed a nation deeply divided and in flux. This volume provides urgently needed insights into American politics and culture during this period of uncertainty. The contributions answer the election's key mysteries, such as how contemporary Christian evangelicals identified in the unrepentant candidate Trump a hero to their cause, and how working class and economically struggling Americans saw in the rich and ostentatious candidate a champion of their plight. The chapters explain how irrationality is creeping into political participation, and demonstrate how media developments enabled a phenomenon like "fake news" to influence the election. At this polarized and contentious moment, this volume satisfies the urgent need for works that carefully analyze the forces and tensions tearing at the American social fabric. Simultaneously intellectual and accessible, this volume is designed to illuminate the 2016 U.S. presidential election and its aftermath for academics and students of politics alike.

Autorentext

Jason L. Mast is a Research Fellow at the Normative Orders Excellence Cluster at Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He is the author of The Performative Presidency: Crisis and Resurrection During the Clinton Years.

Jeffrey C. Alexander is Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology at Yale University, and a Director of the Center for Cultural Sociology. He is the author of The Performance of Politics: Obama's Victory and the Democratic Struggle for Power and co-author of Obama Power.

Inhalt
Introduction Jason Mast, Normative Orders Cluster of Excellence, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany

Section 1: Election 2016: Differences and Reiterations

Chapter 1: Politics as a Vacation

Robin Wagner-Pacific, Department of Sociology, The New School for Social Research, USA

Iddo Tavory, Department of Sociology, New York University, USA

Chapter 2: When Voters Are Voting, What Are They Doing?: Symbolic Selection and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election

Matt Norton, Department of Sociology, University of Oregon, USA

Section 2: Media and News Journalism: Narrative and Fake News

Chapter 3: Deep Stories, Nostalgia Narratives, and Fake News: Storytelling in the Trump Era

Francesca Polletta, Department of Sociology, University of California, Irvine, USA

Jessica Callahan, Department of Sociology, University of California, Irvine, USA

Chapter 4: Journalism after Trump

Ronald N. Jacobs, Department of Sociology, University at Albany, USA

Section 3: The Meanings of Donald Trump and Steve Bannon

Chapter 5: On the Construction Sites of History: Where Did Donald Trump Come From?

Mabel Berezin*, Department of Sociology, Cornell University, USA*

Chapter 6: Donald's Dick: A Man Against the Institutions

Roger Friedland, Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA

Chapter 7: A Period of wild and fierce fanaticism: Populism, Theo-Political Militarism, and the Crisis

of US Hegemony

Julia Hell, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Michigan, USA

George Steinmentz, Department of Sociology, University of Michigan, USA

Section 4: The American Right and Trump-Bannonism

Chapter 8: Raging Against the Enlightenment: Steven Bannon's Anti-Democratic Ideology

Jeffrey C Alexander, Department of Sociology, Yale University, USA

Chapter 9: The Flight 93-ization of American Politics

Alexander Riley, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Bucknell University, USA

Section 5: Religion: The Fates of White Christian Evangelicals and Muslims

Chapter 10: Why Evangelicals Voted for Trump: A Critical Cultural Sociology

Philip Gorski, Department of Sociology, Yale University, USA

Chapter 11: Muslims as Outsiders, Enemies, and Others: The 2016 Presidential Election and the Politics

of Religious Exclusion

Ruth Braunstein, Department of Sociology, University of Connecticut, USA

Section 6: Political Legitimacy and the Civil Sphere

Chapter 12: Populism's Efforts to De-legitimize the Vital Center and the Implications for Liberal Democracy

Peter Kivisto, Department of Sociology, Augustana College, USA

Chapter 13: The Fragmenting of the Civil Sphere: How Partisan Identity Shapes the Moral Evaluations of Candidates and Epistemology

Daniel Kreiss, School of Media and Journalism, University of North Carolina, USA

Chapter 14: Legitimacy Troubles and the Performance of Power in the 2016 US Presidential Election

Jason L. Mast, Normative Orders Exzellenzcluster, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany

Afterword *Lyn Spillman, Department of Sociology, Notre D...