The study focusses on the phenomenon of 'working-class conservatism', support for right-wing or centre parties on the part of certain segments of the working-class. This mode of voting behaviour is analysed in three West European countries; Great Britain, West Germany and Italy. In the introduction a number of explanations are examined which could conceivably account for the phenomenon. It is suggested that explanations centred around the notion of 'embourgeoisement' of the working-class (the process whereby 'affluent' workers come to identify with the middle-class thus voting 'conservative') contain certain weaknesses. It is argued that immediate subcultural influences such as the family, the church and the work-place are still most important in explaining the working-class vote for 'conservative' parties. An explanatory model is developed which emphasizes the influence of a worker's social environment as the chief determinant of his voting behaviour. Hypotheses derived from this model, as well as alternative hypotheses related to the 'embourgeoisement' argument are tested through secondary analysis of survey data collected in the late 1950's and early 1960's. The results of the study suggest that in all three countries 'working-class conservatism' can be explained largely in terms of the subcultural influences outlined in the model. Level of income attained by workers may have some independent effect in West Germany and Great Britain. In these two countries conservative parties are somewhat more successful in retaining the loyalties of conservative workers in the low and high income categories compared to those in the medium categories. However this does not mean a confirmation of the 'embourgeoisement1 argument. Most 'affluent conservative workers', it is argued, arrived at their conservative voting identity via early parental socialization. There are few defectors from left-wing parties to conservative parties among 'left' workers who attain a high level of income. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

Historians and Mormon scholars have largely ignored the African American experience in Utah during the latter half of the twentieth century. A close examination of Utah politics during the years 1960 to 1978 shows the profound influence of Mormonism and Latter-day Saint institutions in seemingly secular spaces, such as college campuses and state government. This work demonstrates how LDS theology and culture informed the sociopolitical landscape and contributed to white conservative resistance to racial equality readily found in Utah. Racial discrimination was not unique to Utah, but it did have its own particular flavor because of the predominance of Latter-day Saints in the state. This thesis explores the scholarship written about African Americans in Utah and elucidates the ways in which LDS theology and Church leadership extensively affected African American life in the Beehive State.

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This study examines the ideology of white southern opposition to the civil rights movement in order to recognize the transformation of white concepts of race in the midst of racial change and how those changes impacted the emergence of new conservative political principles in the post-civil rights era. The recognition of a new racial consciousness informs historical appraisals of the significance of white resistance and suggests that this opposition made a vital contribution to the political realignments of the 1960s and 1970s. The foundation of this study rests upon the Citizens’ Council Forum, a television and radio program that aired from 1957-1966. Forum’s sponsor, the Citizens’ Council of America, has been consistently recognized as the most highly-organized and active of white resistance organizations in the South. Forum was the Council’s effort to place its organizing principles of states’ rights and racial integrity among a myriad of other pressing political problems in order to sell its campaign to preserve segregation to an audience that extended beyond the borders of the South. This effort required guests of the show to subvert questions of racial equality to broader concerns of federal power, liberal politics and foreign policy. Attention to these topics in addition to Forum discussions of the civil rights movement reveals that in the process of opposing racial change, white resistance helped usher in a new era of racial consciousness that concealed race within conservative ideas. Race became a powerful insinuation within these issues. The “colorblind” tactics of Forum guests eschewed direct denunciations of the black race but ensured that race would remain a firm component of public political discussions. This study highlights the importance of reaction to historical change as a way to understand the evolution of ideas. As the civil rights movement instigated new, more equitable ideas about race, its opponents acted in parallel ways to repackage the principles of white supremacy. They did so by leveraging principles against the actual conditions that the system of racial discrimination wrought. Less visible forms of racialized rhetoric replaced the raw language of segregation and gave segregationists and their sympathizers a home in conservative politics.

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This rhetorical analysis of a contemporary and historical social movement, American conservatism, through a prominent intellectual figure, Russell Kirk, begins with a description of the author's work. Ideologies, arguments, and sentiments are considered as implicit rhetoric, where social relations are defined by persuasion, ideas, historical appeal, persona, and various invitations to shared assumptions. First, a descriptive historical context is the foundation to explore the beliefs, communicative strategies, and internal tensions of the conservative movement through the development of various identities and communities during its rise as a formidable political power. Second, an analysis of the author and the author's texts clarifies argumentative and stylistic choices, providing a framework for his communicative choices. The thesis of this discussion is that the discourses implicit and explicit in the author's writing and conduct of life were imaginative and literary products of what he termed "moral imagination." How this imagination developed, and its impact upon his persuasion, was a unique approach not only to an emergent intellectual tradition but also to the disciplines of history, fiction, policy, and audience. This work argues there were two components to Kirk's rhetoric of moral imagination. First, his choosing of historical subjects, in biographical sketch and literary content, was an indication of his own interest in rhetorical efficacy. Second, he attempted to live out the sort of life he claimed to value. I argue he taught observers by an ethos, an endeavor to live a rhetorical demonstration of what he genuinely believed was good. As demonstrated by what many who knew Kirk identified as an inner strength of character and conduct, his rhetorical behavior was motivated by a love for and a curiosity toward wonder and mystery. By an imaginative reading of history, his exemplars of more properly ordered sentiments of a moral order sought to build communities of associational, relational persons that found identity in relation to other persons. His ambition was to explore and communicate what it meant to be human - in limitation, in promise, and in the traditions and customs that provide a framework for "human" in a culture.

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Thesis (M.A.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of Anthropology, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.