Content area
Full Text
Qual Sociol (2015) 38:353374 DOI 10.1007/s11133-015-9314-3
Ruth Braunstein1
Published online: 19 October 2015# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015
Abstract A fragmented public sphere presents a challenge for political actors seeking public recognition of their legitimacy, authenticity and worthiness. As a movement that has received differential levels of recognition across audiences, the Tea Partys experience offers insight into this phenomenon. This article builds on existing research on the Tea Partys relationship with the media by exploring how movement participants interpret and respond to this kind of mixed audience response. An ethnographic account of one local Tea Party groups experience during and in the wake of Glenn Becks Restoring Honor Rally illuminates the performative and interactional dimensions of this experience. It shows that the rally was an opportunity for this group to enact a populist narrative of Bthe people^ confronting out-of-touch elites, but when participants were confronted with fragmented recognition of their rallys size and authenticity, they engaged in identity work that drew a moral boundary between affirming and disparaging audiences. Discussions about the rally were subsequently dominated by a second narrativeof embattled conservatives facing off against biased, uncivil and unpatriotic liberals. In this way, even though the rally failed to generate the recognition participants sought, it became an occasion for the group to replenish its solidarity and sense of purpose.
Keywords Mass demonstrations . Media . Recognition . Social movements . Social performance . Tea Party movement
In April 2009, hundreds of Tax Day Tea Party protests were staged in cities around the country. The media took notice, shining a spotlight on the national organizations, local groups, and ordinary people that would soon coalesce under the banner of the Tea Party movement. Five months later, on September 12, 2009, a Taxpayer March on Washingtonled by the national organization FreedomWorks and promoted by Fox News host Glenn Beckdrew members of this fledgling movement to the nations capital where, like countless movements before them,
* Ruth Braunstein [email protected]
1 University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA
http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s11133-015-9314-3&domain=pdf
Web End = http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s11133-015-9314-3&domain=pdf
Web End = http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s11133-015-9314-3&domain=pdf
Web End = http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s11133-015-9314-3&domain=pdf
Web End = http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s11133-015-9314-3&domain=pdf
Web End = http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s11133-015-9314-3&domain=pdf
Web End = http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s11133-015-9314-3&domain=pdf
Web End = http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s11133-015-9314-3&domain=pdf
Web End = The Tea Party Goes to Washington: Mass Demonstrations as Performative...