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Book Review Talking Politics by William A. Gamson

Article  in  American Journal of Sociology · January 1994

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Robert D Benford
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 Book Reviews

Talking Politics. By William A. Gamson. New York: Cambridge Univer-

sity Press, 1992. Pp. vii+ 272. $49.95 (cloth); $15.95 (paper).

Robert D. Benford

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Talking Politics is an important and timely book. William A. Gamson

sheds considerable theoretical and empirical light on how ordinary people

make sense of public issues. This elegant and insightful study comes at

a time when social-movement scholars have renewed their once vibrant

interest in culture. While the resurgence has yielded fruitful investiga-

tions of collective identity, oppositional consciousness, collective-action

frames, media packages, vocabularies of motive, and movement cultures,

something quite fundamental has been missing from this mosaic. We

know little about the basic interpretive work that typically precedes con-

sensus mobilization. Granted, we know a great deal about the attitudinal

and microstructural traits of joiners, correlates of participation, recruit-

ment tactics, frame-alignment processes, and the like. Yet we lack suffi-

cient understanding of how people formulate their attitudes regarding

public issues. How do people develop collective identities? How is politi-

cal consciousness fashioned? Why do some movement frames resonate

among particular audiences while others do not? What roles do media,

popular wisdom, biography, and talk play in the social construction of

shared definitions that could stimulate collective action? Gamson seeks

to advance understanding of these fundamental sense-making processes

by examining the political discourse of common folk.

In doing so he utilized two types of data sources: media discourse

and peer group conversations. Media-discourse data were derived from

samples of television network news, national newsmagazine accounts,

syndicated editorial cartoons, and syndicated opinion columns. Peer

group conversational data were generated from a quota/snowball sam-

pling technique yielding 37 respondent-generated focus groups comprised

of four to six "working people" and a facilitator. Peer group members

were familiar acquaintances, frequently co-workers invited by a sampled

subject; consequently, groups tended to be racially homogeneous but of

mixed gender. Not only does this technique yield interesting categorical

comparisons (e.g., comparing blacks and whites on affirmative action),

it provides a close approximation of spontaneous, "sociable public dis-

course. " Facilitators stimulated discussion on a particular topic but did

so in a frame-neutral fashion so as not to influence the tenor of the

discourse. Numerous excerpts of conversations serve as rich illustrative

material in support of Gamson's analyses as well as demonstrating the

"natural" flow of these conversations. In what has become a Gamson

trademark, he includes three methodological/data appendices that offer a

clear, comprehensive account of the study's sampling techniques, coding

criteria, and facilitators' instructions.

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 American Journal of Sociology

The media-discourse samples and the peer group conversations focused

on four public issues: affirmative action, nuclear power, troubled indus-

try, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Gamson and his associates (indepen-

dent coders) identified several distinctive interpretations or frames for

each of the issues. For example, for the nuclear power topic they identi-

fied "progress," "energy independence," "soft paths," "no public ac-

countability," "not cost effective," "runaway technology," and "devil's

bargain" frames. This coding procedure permitted analyses of the rela-

tionship between prevalent media frames, how people talk about public

issues, and the development of collective-action frames by the peer

groups.

In part 1, Gamson elaborates on three essential components of collec-

tive-action frames: injustice, agency, and identity. The injustice compo-

nent involves a sense of unfairness, an expression of indignation regard-

ing some circumstance or event. Gamson concludes that while "there is

a strong overall relationship between the prominence of injustice frames

in media discourse and in popular discourse," the "causal relation-

ship . . . is complicated and indirect" (p. 58). Agency refers to collective

efficacy, a sense that citizen action could ameliorate the perceived injus-

tice. Again, the relationship between the media's portrayal of agency and

the citizens' sense of efficacy is complicated, often mediated by factors

such as experiential knowledge and the actions of elites. The final compo-

nent of collective-action frames, identity, concerns the process of devel-

oping "adversarial frames." Gamson found that most peer groups used

an adversarial frame, even in the absence of a corresponding frame in

media discourse. Groups were more likely to develop a collective identity

when they shared a common social location such as race or class. Part 1

concludes with an all-too-brief chapter on the complex relationship be-

tween talk and action, a relationship that is not nearly as straightforward

as much of sociology seems to assume.

Part 2 deals with the resources people use to make sense of public

issues including media frames, popular wisdom, and experiential knowl-

edge. He offers compelling analyses and discussions of the factors that

affect whether particular frames resonate. This section also addresses

issue-salience factors, especially issue engagement and proximity. In the

concluding chapter, Gamson seeks to integrate the two parts to under-

stand how political consciousness is developed and what its relationship

is to collective action.

Students of social movements, political sociology, political communica-

tion, media studies, culture, and social problems will find Talking Politics

well worth reading and passing on to their students. Gamson has struck

again with a work that is likely to become a classic.

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