Overview

We may think we know our politicians, but we know very little about the people who create them. Producing Politics will change the way we think about our country's political candidates, the campaigns that bolster them, and the people who craft them. Political campaigns are designed to influence voter behavior and determine elections. They are supposed to serve as a conduit between candidates and voters. However, sociologist Daniel Laurison reveals a much different reality: campaigns are riddled with outdated strategies, unquestioned conventional wisdom, and preconceived notions about voters. Through over 70 off-the-record interviews with key campaign staff and consultants, Laurison uncovers how the industry creates a political environment that is confusing, polarizing, and alienating to voters. Campaigns are often an echo chamber of staffers with replicate backgrounds and ideologies; most political operatives are white men from middle- to upper-class backgrounds who are driven more by their desire to climb the political ladder than the desire to create an open conversation between voter and candidate. Producing Politics highlights the impact of national campaign professionals in the US through a sociological lens. It explores the role political operatives play in shaping the way that voters understand political candidates, participate in elections, and perceive our democratic process--and is an essential guide to understanding the current American political system.

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9781666581683

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Daniel Laurison is an assistant professor of sociology in the Sociology and Anthropology Department at Swarthmore College and an associate editor of The British Journal of Sociology. His research centers on class and inequalities in political participation. He has been the recipient of a Carnegie Fellowship, a Social Science Research Council grant, and funding from the National Science Foundation, and co-authored The Class Ceiling: Why It Pays to Be Privileged. Daniel Martin Elliott is an actor, a voiceover talent, a model, and a writer based in Virginia. He has starred in several indie feature films, television shows, commercials, and mixed-media projects and has done various voiceover projects, including audiobook narration, corporate-video narration, documentary film, and radio/tv commercials. When he isn't in front of the camera or behind a microphone, he's writing. The Kingmaker is his first published novel.

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