In Change They Can’t Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America, Christopher Parker and Matt A. Barreto make a convincing case for what we call “reactionary conservatism,” a belief system that stands apart from establishment conservatism. We also identify national right-wing social movements that predate the Tea Party, but have much in common. This talk examines the 1960s, a time of massive change in America. Moreover, this talk will demonstrate that the Tea Party isn’t sui generis; that it’s a part of a long tradition of right-wing movements. More theoretically, I illustrate that right wing movements–including the one appearing in the 1960s–were anything but conservative.
Response from Bryan Turner, Director, Mellon Committee for the Study of Religion.
This response aims to raise some issues about a comparative sociology of US and English conservatism. One obvious difference is the absence of a religious flavor to twentieth century Conservative Party politics. My talk describes the shift from one nation conservatism to its two nation version: that is Thatcher accepted the idea of a rich and a poor Britain as the inevitable consequence of Thatcherism. In short, there was not historical continuity but an abrupt change. Scottish independence and UKIP may be some consequences of this; the other is nostalgia for the shires, peaceful villages and monoculturalism.
Please join us for a wine reception after the event.
Chris Parker (Ph.D., University of Chicago, 2001) is an associate professor, and Stuart A. Scheingold Professor of Social Justice and Political Science in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington. The bulk of his research takes a behavioral approach to historical events. More specifically, he brings survey data to bear on questions of historical import. His first book, Fighting for Democracy: Black Veterans and the Struggle Against White Supremacy in the Postwar South (Princeton University Press, 2009),winner of APSA’s Ralph J. Bunche Award, takes a fresh approach to the civil rights movement by gauging the extent to which black veterans contributed to social change. A second book, Change They Can’t Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America (Princeton University Press, 2013), explores the beliefs, attitudes, and behavior of the Tea Party. A third book examines the ideological and sociological origins of what has come to be known as the urban crisis of the 1960s. In short, it examines the micro-foundations of the disturbances that swept America in the late 1960s. A Robert Wood Johnson Scholar (2005-07), he has published in the Journal of Politics, International Security, Political Research Quarterly and the Du Bois Review. Parker is the principal investigator of the Multi-State Survey on Race and Politics, and the Director of the Center for Survey Research at the University of Washington.
Bryan Turner, director of the GC’s Committee for the Study of Religion, is one of the world’s leading sociologists of religion; he has also devoted attention to sociological theory, the study of human rights, and the sociology of the body. His current research involves the role of religion in contemporary Asia and the changing nature of citizenship in a globalizing world. Turner has written, coauthored, or edited more than seventy books and more than two hundred articles and chapters, including most recently The Religious and the Political: A Comparative Sociology of Religion (2013) and Religion and Modern Society: Citizenship, Secularisation and the State (2011), both published by Cambridge University Press.
