Local Tea Party Groups and the Vibrancy of the Movement

Abstract

The Tea Party Movement (TPM) is often discussed in terms of Americans for Prosperity, the Republican Party, and other well‐funded, national groups. Yet, grounded ethnographic research reveals vibrant, independent, local organizations, which, while they do draw on nationally disseminated cultural images and discourses, are far from simple agents of the larger organizations and media. Relying on eighteen months of fieldwork among eight local Tea Party groups in central North Carolina, I argue that these small, locally situated groups are crucial components in the TPM and its effects. Using theoretical concepts from social movement studies and social practice theory, I analyze the ways personal and Internet‐based social networks, media, and elite organizations are cocreating new political subjects, and demonstrate the importance of local, face‐to‐face political organizations in cultivating and animating these subjects. I suggest that localized political groups are important for long‐lasting political transformations. [social movements, right wing movements, identity and agency, United States, American South]

From Brexit to Trump: Anthropology and the rise of nationalist populism

“…If one reads media accounts of Trump rallies carefully, one often finds quotes from small‐business owners, accountants, and pharmacists, but they are buried in the prose rather than headlined. Yet such people formed the backbone of the Tea Party movement that presaged Trump's rise (Cramer ; Skocpol and Williamson ; Westermeyer ). Like their class counterparts in the United Kingdom who voted solidly for Brexit, the people of this class are deeply alienated from distant bureaucracies (Brussels, London, and Washington) and ever‐expanding regulatory regimes, and they are particularly disposed to believe that their tax dollars go to undeserving welfare cases.…”

“…But the role of race and its intersectional relationship with class in an electoral moment marked by extreme volatility calls for analytic care and subtlety. To begin with, as Walley (2017b) points out, the local configuration of racial politics was different in the southern and midwestern states that Trump carried, and it is noteworthy that the few social scientists who have conducted fieldwork with Tea Party or Brexit supporters tend, more than analyses from a distance, to downplay allegations of racism (Cramer ; Eriksen ; Evans ; Koch ; Skocpol and Williamson ; Westermeyer ). Such analysts argue that the white working class, rather than expressing some primordial racism, began “to learn, in the multicultural climate, how to be ethnic too” (Evans ).…”

Ethnography and the Making of “The People”: Uncovering Conservative Populist Politics in the United States

“…Particularly because of the importance of social media and other online platforms for organizing and recruiting supporters, cyber‐ethnography should be part of ethnographies of populism (Bjork‐James ). Another response to this challenge is for ethnographers to document the cultures and ideas that influence conservative populists and to explain and translate this to a wider audience (Westermeyer ). Certainly, ethnographers have always worked with people with whom they do not share beliefs, whether about religion or politics (Luhrmann ; Stoller and Olkes ; Harding ).…”

“…This way of identifying the deserving and undeserving people in the town follows what anthropologists Sandra Morgen and Jennifer Erickson identified as taxpayer identity politics, the creation of a deserving taxpayer in opposition to public service recipients and government workers (Morgen ; Morgen and Erickson ). Several years later, after the recession and the election of Barack Obama, the Tea Party would build from such local organizing and taxpayer identity politics (Westermeyer ). Some of the same organizations that promoted TABOR contributed to the success of the Tea Party movement in the late 2000s (Mayer ).…”

Human Rights and Broken Cisterns: Counterpublic Christianity and Rights-based Discourse in Contemporary England

“…Given the rise of comparative conservative counterpublics throughout Europe and America (Hochschild 2016;Westermeyer 2016;Pedersen 2017), I contend that anthropologists must critically engage with the principles and pragmatics behind those who continue to be dismissed as anthropology's 'repugnant cultural others' (Harding 1991). It is only by taking seriously the ontological assumptions and meaningmaking strategies of conservative counterpublics that we can began to understand the appeal of these movements (Westermeyer 2016: 134).…”