Person:

Park, Bo Yun

This paper contributes to the study of social change by considering boundary work as a dimension of cultural change. Drawing on the computer-assisted qualitative analysis of 73 formal speeches made by Donald Trump during the 2016 electoral campaign, we argue that his political rhetoric, which led to his presidential victory, addressed the white working classes’ concern with their declining position in the national pecking order. He addressed their concern by raising the moral status of this group, that is, by 1) emphatically describing them as hard working Americans who are victims of globalization; 2) voicing their concerns about ‘people above’ (professionals, the rich, and politicians); 3) drawing strong moral boundaries toward undocumented immigrants, refugees and Muslims; 4) presenting African American and (legal) Hispanic Americans as workers who also deserve jobs; 5) stressing the role of working class men as protectors of women and LGBTQ people. This particular case study of cultural resonance provides a novel, distinctively sociological approach for capturing dynamics of social change.

Three prominent research programs in cognitive psychology would benefit from a stronger engagement with the cultural context of cognition: studies of poverty focused on scarcity and cognitive bandwidth (CB); of the dual-process model of moral judgment (DPM); and of biases using the implicit association test (IAT). We address the blind spots common to these programs and suggest research strategies for moving beyond an exclusive focus on cognition. Research on poverty using the CB approach would benefit from considering the cultural schemas that influence how people perceive and prioritize needs. DPM researchers could explain variation by analysing cultural repertoires that structure moral choices. Research using the IAT can better explain implicit attitudes by addressing the variability in cultural schemas that undergird biases. We identify how these research programs can deepen the causal understanding of human attitudes and behaviours by addressing the interaction between internal cognition and supra-individual cultural repertoires.

This chapter reviews and offers directions for future research on student politics in higher education in different parts of the world. The concept of student politics refers to the activities related to the power relations between students and other social actors in and out the higher education systems; more specifically, it pertains to the relationships between students and university authorities, as well as the interactions between students and state officials. In analyzing the various forms of student politics, we draw the distinction between representation and activism, as two distinct yet interrelated activities. The first pertains to students organizing into representative student associations, such as student governments, graduate student employee unions, party-affiliated student organizations, or other student interest groups. Activism, on the other hand, denotes practices of student collective action through various forms of political engagement, whereby students act in support of or in opposition to a specific cause and/or hold the authority accountable. The analysis is guided by questions on how the various forms of student politics emerge and how they develop their organizational characteristics and their respective strategic repertoires.Keywords: student politics; student representation; student activism; student governments; graduate student unions; party-affiliated student organizations; student political behavior; college students