Context and contact: unifying the study of environmental effects on politics

Nathan, Noah L. and Sands, Melissa L. ORCID: 0000-0002-4910-7509 (2023) Context and contact: unifying the study of environmental effects on politics. Annual Review of Political Science, 26. pp. 233-252. ISSN 1094-2939

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Abstract

A growing literature explores how local environments, or contexts, affect political behavior, especially by shaping interpersonal contact with social out-groups. While many studies still draw directly on long-standing hypotheses from contact theory, this research agenda increasingly focuses on new research questions, beyond the classic social psychology literature, and new empirical cases, including from across the lower- and middle-income world. We develop a typology of forms of context and contact to aid the aggregation of findings across disparate cases and demonstrate that the mechanisms that may account for the political effects of intergroup context and contact are broader than those typically explored in psychologically oriented research. We propose future directions for research in this area, including greater focus on the intersection of ethnic and class-based contact and greater attention to how built or computer-based environments may mediate or mirror the effects of demographic contexts.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2023 The Author(s)
Divisions:	Government
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HM Sociology J Political Science
Date Deposited:	31 Jul 2023 13:36
Last Modified:	18 Nov 2024 21:24
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/119875

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