View article

For scholars of public opinion and mass behavior, the archetypal citizen is often conceptualized as an unmoored social isolate-an individual without a home, wrestling alone with the predispositions in her head and with a cascade of messages from the media and political elites. Yet the reality is quite different: citizens exist and make decisions “in place”—in neighborhoods, in schools, on the job. Such sites are defined, among other things, by the resources and opportunities they provide, the burdens they impose or relieve, and the social observations and interactions they facilitate. What citizens infer, learn, and experience in their physical environments may have consequences for their decision-making about politics. Surely, it is unrealistic to assume that these experiences have absolutely no bearing on politics; this is precisely the assumption implicit in too many studies of political behavior. We know relatively little …