The Performance of Politics

"In an extraordinary analysis of real breadth and depth, Jeffrey Alexander challenges us to re-think Barack Obama's election as president. Political observers have focused too much on the plain demographic facts of 2008, and too little about how and why those facts came to be. Reflect on the performance that takes place on a grand stage, Alexander advises, and we'll see the big picture."--Larry J. Sabato, author of The Year of Obama, and Director, Center for Politics, University of Virginia "This is a work of dazzling brilliance and imagination. It sparkles with new insights that go well beyond standard interpretations of electoral politics. Especially to be treasured is its keen understanding of civil society and the importance of moral meaning and symbolism in public life."--Robert Wuthnow, Professor and Department Chair of Sociology, Princeton University "Revealing himself to be de Tocqueville's true heir, Jeffrey Alexander draws a sweeping and daring portrait of the heroes, villains, fools, and mavericks who peopled the 2008 American presidential campaign. For Alexander, political elections are serious and dramatic moments of cultural meaning-making, in which the boundaries of civil society are forged and challenged. The Performance of Politics is riveting, taking the reader instantly back to those heady days of the 2008 campaign and, in the process, bringing sociological theory vividly to life."--Robin Wagner-Pacifici, Gil and Frank Mustin Professor of Sociology, Swarthmore College "This book is a 'Making of the President 2008' with brains. The entire cast, Obama, Hillary, McCain and Palin enter this compelling narrative in the jaws of an unexpected Wall Street collapse. Uncompromisingly intelligent, yet a compulsive read."--Scott Lash, Professor and Director of Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London "Jeffrey Alexander's intriguing argument in The Performance of Politics, a meticulous review of the 2008 campaign, is that his fellow sociologists have overemphasized impersonal social forces at the expense of the theater of public life--the way politician perform "symbolically." It's a prosaic call for a more poetic (or at least aesthetic) understanding of politics. Ideology must connect viscerally, or it doesn't connect at all. Liberalism, like any idea or product, can succeed only if it sells."The New York Times Book Review "Representing a study of politics through a lens of cultural sociology, Alexander presents original theoretical arguments on the democratic struggle for power in America, and in the process provides a new explanation for Obama's historic victory." --Contemporary Sociology