The Strength of Weekly Ties: Relations of Material and Symbolic Exchange in the Conservative Movement

Thomas Medvetz
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Thomas Medvetz: University of California, Berkeley, tmm@berkeley.edu

Politics & Society, 2006, vol. 34, issue 3, 343-368

Abstract: The current Republican ascendancy in American government has generated considerable scholarly interest in the conservative movement. Through an ethno-graphic study of the widely publicized but seldom-observed “Wednesday meeting†of conservative activists, this article inquires into the bases of the conservative movement’s internal cohesion and successful management of alliances with state officials. I argue that the meeting functions as both an instrument of material power and a ritual of symbolic maintenance by establishing relations of reciprocal exchange and sustaining a moral community of conservative activists and their allies. More broadly, the article examines the mutual conditioning and genetic linkage of two dimensions of social reality: relations of force and relations of meaning.

Keywords: conservative movement; right-wing activism; social movements; Grover Norquist; Pierre Bourdieu (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:polsoc:v:34:y:2006:i:3:p:343-368

DOI: 10.1177/0032329206290424

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