Ethnography and the Making of “The People”: Uncovering Conservative Populist Politics in the United States

• Date: 01 May 2019
• Author: Claudine M. Pied
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12280
• Published date: 01 May 2019

Ethnography and the Making of “The

People”: Uncovering Conservative Populist

Politics in the United States

By Claudine M. Pied*

abstraCt. The election of Donald Trump, the Brexit vote, and rise of

conservative populism in countries around the world has led to an

abundance of scholarship on populism and the white working class.

Much of this work seeks to explain the underlying cause of this

conservative populist politics, focusing on globalization and economic

precarity, racism and anti-immigrant sentiment, or failures of political

leadership. Survey data and polling analyses, in particular, explain

relationships between demographics, political opinions, and voting

results. Though quantitative data on the social groups or activists most

involved in populist politics are important, missing from this research

are ethnographies of populism that explore how local, state, and

national actors influence the meaning of “the people.” In this article, I

will argue that ethnography is particularly well-suited for exploring

the coming together of local and national politics and the subtle ways

that economic insecurity, racism, sexism, and Islamophobia intersect

in the making of “hard working taxpayers” or “ordinary folks.” I draw

from research in a predominantly white, former manufacturing town

in central Maine to illustrate the significance of this ethnographic

approach to populism.

Introduct ion

In 2005, years before the Tea Party became a national populist move-

ment that organizes against government power, the Maine Heritage

Policy Center promoted a ballot initiative to minimize state and local

spending. The Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR), as it was called, would

limit taxation to population and inflation increases, following a law by

the same name, which had been in place in Colorado since 1992. This

American Jour nal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 78, No. 3 (May, 2 019).

DOI: 10 .1111/ajes.122 80

© 2019 American Journa l of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

*Associate professor of sociology and anthropology. Department of Social Sciences,

University of Wisconsin, Platteville. Email: piedc@uwplatt.edu

762 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology

effort was not limited to Maine; national research and policy organiza-

tions that advocate limited government, including Americans for Tax

Reform and FreedomWorks, had launched efforts to address taxation

and spending through state-level ballot initiatives around the country.

Maine was one of the few states with enough signatures to get TABOR

on the ballot. Pro- and anti-TABOR mobilization efforts, including

television advertisements, signs, and a well-attended debate at the

regional high school auditorium, warned residents of the dangers of

“status quo” spending for their community and their family budgets.

Opponents countered that an under-funded government would lead

to further economic decline. Though Maine voters rejected TABOR by

a slim margin in 2006 and again in 2009, this organizing effort brought

together the ideas and discourse of national, state, and local political

leaders. As I began doing research in 2006 in a small, former industrial

town in central Maine, this anti-tax movement was directing support-

ers to frame their economic woes in terms of taxation and government

overspending.

In town meetings and private conversations, community members

debated how much the municipality should spend on the library,

police officer salaries, community development, and other operational

costs. One group of residents consistently fought to cut spending on

behalf of the taxpayers, the senior citizens, and “the people of this

town” (Pied 2011). At town meetings, they usually sought to cut, not

the most expensive budget items, but the town’s contribution to the

library and several social service organizations, including a food bank,

a domestic violence organization, and a counseling center. Implicit in

these arguments was the idea that “these people” who used the food

bank, general assistance, and social services were not “the taxpayers”

meant to benefit from limited government. This way of identifying the

deserving and undeserving people in the town follows what anthro-

pologists Sandra Morgen and Jennifer Erickson identified as taxpayer

identity politics, the creation of a deserving taxpayer in opposition

to public service recipients and government workers (Morgen 2011;

Morgen and Erickson 2017). Several years later, after the recession and

the election of Barack Obama, the Tea Party would build from such

local organizing and taxpayer identity politics (Westermeyer 2016).

Some of the same organizations that promoted TABOR contributed to