Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T16:38:35.443Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A Discussion of Katherine J. Cramer's The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 June 2017

Abstract

The policies of Republican Governor Scott Walker have come to symbolize a resurgent assault on the public sector, and on public employee unions in particular, by the Republican Party. The fact that this is happening in Wisconsin, the state that in the last century was considered the “laboratory of Progressivism,” makes the politics surrounding these policies all the more compelling. In The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker, Katherine J. Cramer analyzes the “politics of resentment” surrounding these developments. Employing an ethnographic “method of listening,” Cramer furnishes thick description of the political language employed by rural Wisconsinites, and proceeds to develop an interpretive theory of “political resentment” that illuminates the reasons why lower-class citizens so strongly oppose public policies seeking to offset social and economic inequality. The book is important methodologically and politically. We have thus invited a range of social and political scientists to comment on the book as a work of political science and as a diagnosis of the current political moment.

Type
Review Symposium: The Politics of Resentment
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Achen, Christopher H. and Bartels, Larry M.. 2016. Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Representative Government. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Badger, Emily. 2016. “The Powerful Thing that Divides Britain Also Divides America.” Washington Post 24 Jun. Available https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/24/the-powerful-thing-that-divides-britain-also-divides-america/?utm_term=.da133f43ffb6, accessed 26 Jan 2017.Google Scholar
Cramer, Katherine J. 2016. The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness and the Rise of Scott Walker. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacGillis, Alec. 2014. “The Unelectable Whiteness of Scott Walker.” The New Republic, 15 Jun. Available https://newrepublic.com/article/118145/scott-walkers-toxic-racial-politics, accessed 26 Jan 2017.Google Scholar
Lane, Robert. 1962. Political Ideology: Why the Common Man Believes What He Does. Oxford, England: Free Press of Glencoe.Google Scholar
Wallis, Claudia. 2016. “Trump’s Victory and the Politics of Resentment.” Scientific American 12 Nov 2016. Available https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-s-victory-and-the-politics-of-resentment/, accessed 26 Jan 2017.Google Scholar