Segmentation

SSRC Program Links

This section compiles literature analyzing the segmentation of the public sphere with a variety of different conceptual tools: “issue publics” versus “camps,” “fragmentation” or “pillarization” of society as extreme forms of social and political cleavages, literature on “political machines” and “polarization” as well as “political realignment.” It also includes studies of diaspora public spheres as a special form of segmentation, divided from the main domestic public sphere. These segmentary divisions may or may not overlap with stratificatory divisions. The segmentation of the public sphere refers to the different networks of social solidarity and belonging within a given public sphere. See also the section on Social Solidarity, Integration and Nationalism

  • Baldassarri, Delia, and Andrew Gelman. 2008. “Partisans without Constraint: Political Polarization and Trends in American Public Opinion.” American Journal of Sociology 114:408-446.
  • Bank, Jan. 1981. “‘Verzuiling’: A Confessional Road to Secularization, Emancipation and the Decline of Political Catholicism.” Pp. 207-230 in Church and State since the Reformation: VII: Britain and the Netherlands, edited by Duke, A.C., and C.A. Tamse. The Hague: Nijhoff. On pillarization.
  • Converse, Philip E. 1964. “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics.”in Ideology and Discontent, edited by Apter, David E. Glencoe (IL): Free Press.
  • DiMaggio, Paul, John Evans, and Bethany Bryson. 1996. “Have American’s Social Attitudes Become More Polarized?” American Journal of Sociology 102:690-755.
  • Elkins, David J. 1993. “The Nature of Issue Publics.” Pp. 80-98 in Manipulation and Consent: How Voters and Leaders Manage Complexity. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
  • Ertman, Thomas. 2000. “Liberalization, Democratization, and the Origins of a “Pillarized” Civil Society in Nineteenth-Century Belgium and the Netherlands.” Pp. 155-178 in Civil Society before Democracy: Lessons from Nineteenth-Century Europe, edited by Bermeo, Nancy, and Philip Nord. Lanham (MD): Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
  • Evans, John, Bethany Bryson, and Paul DiMaggio. 2001. “Opinion Polarization: Important Contributions, Necessary Limitations.” American Journal of Sociology 106:944-959.
  • Fiorina, Morris P., and Samuel J. Abrams. 2008. “Political Polarization in the American Public.” Annual Review of Political Science 11:563-588.
  • Fischer, Claude S., and Michael Hout. 2006. “When Americans Disagreed: Cultural Fragmentation and Conflict.” Pp. 212-239 in Century of Difference: How America Changed in the Last One Hundred Years. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
  • Fischer, Claude S., and Greggor Mattson. 2009. “Is America Fragmenting?” Annual Review of Sociology 35.
  • Fishman, Robert M. 2004. Democracy’s Voices: Social Ties and the Quality of Public Life in Spain. Ithaca (NY): Cornell University Press.
  • Gosnell, Harold F. 1968. Machine Politics: Chicago Model. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
  • Lijphart, Arend. 1968. The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands. Berkeley (CA): University of California Press. On pillarization.
  • Manza, Jeff, and Clem Brooks. 1999. Social Cleavages and Political Change: Voter Alignment and U.S. Party Coalitions. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • McCormick, Richard L. 1986. The Party Period and Public Policy: American Politics from the Age of Jackson to the Progressive Era. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • McGerr, Michael E. 1986. The Decline of Popular Politics: The American North, 1865-1928. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Silbey, Joel H. 1987. The Partisan Imperative: The Dynamics of American Politics Before the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • —. 1991. The American Political Nation, 1838-1893. Stanford (CA): Stanford University Press.
  • White, Harrison C. 2008. “Pillarization.” Pp. 236 in Identity and Control: How Social Formations Emerge. Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press.

Diaspora and Ethnic Media

  • Hardt, Hanno. 1989. “The Foreign Language Press in American Press History.” Journal of Communication 39:114–131.
  • Husband, Charles, ed. 2006. A Richer Vision: The Development of Ethnic Minority Media in Western Democracies. Paris: UNESCO.
  • Karim, Karim H., ed. 2003. The Media of Diaspora. New York: Routledge.
  • Meiss, Guy T., and Alice A. Tait, eds. 2006. Ethnic Media in America: Building a System of Their Own. Dubuque (IA): Kendall/Hunt Publishing.
  • Miller, Sally M. 1987. The Ethnic Press in the United States: A Historical Analysis and Handbook. Westport (CT): Greenwood Press.
  • Park, Robert Ezra. 1922. The Immigrant Press and Its Control. New York/London: Harper & Brothers.
  • Riggins, Stephen H., ed. 1992. Ethnic Minority Media: An International Perspective. Newbury Park (CA): Sage.
  • Shi, Yu. 2009. “Re-evaluating the `Alternative’ Role of Ethnic Media in the US: the Case of Chinese-language Press and Working-Class Women Readers.” Media, Culture & Society 31:597–616.
  • Sun, Wanning, ed. 2006. Media and the Chinese Diaspora: Community, Communications and Commerce. London: Routledge.

More To Come