Book Reviews
Ever since the publication of Paul E. Peterson’s City Limits (The University of Chicago Press, 1981), urban scholars have been grappling with the relative influence of community politics in the face of a tax-sensitive and potentially mobile population. In the edited volume reviewed here, Elaine B. Sharp and her contributing authors explore disputes, defined as culture wars, from the perspective that they are motivated more by concerns of morality than by economic self-interest. “Devoted to the task of conceptual clarification,” this book examines the roles local governments adopt when confronting a culture war, and it explores the conditions and circumstances that prompt a particular role’s adoption (7). Ultimately, Sharp argues that culture wars “rightly constitute a fourth arena of local politics, alongside [Peterson’s] allocational, developmental, and redistributional arenas” (237).
Culture wars are “disputes grounded in moral concerns [author’s emphasis]...that are often passionate and strident” and are likely to be highly salient to a general public (3–4). The activists involved in these disputes are not typically satisfied with “compromise, coalition formation, and other elements of normal politics” (3). What distinguishes culture wars in the urban context is that they are, unlike most local issues, relatively immune from the influences of the urban bureaucracy and are not territorially bound.
Drawing on her earlier work (Urban Affairs Review 31: 738–58), Sharp begins by proposing six potential roles that local governments may adopt when dealing with a culture war: evasion, responsive or hyperactive responsive action, entrepreneurial instigation, repression, and unintentional instigation. In the ensuing chapters, the authors investigate the roles local governments adopt when confronted by anti-abortion protests, demands for gay and lesbian rights, antihomosexual protests, and needle exchanges. In each of these chapters, the authors explore various cultural and institutional explanations for the role choices made by local governments.
The responses to anti-abortion protests in two South Carolina cities (Columbia and Greenville) are examined by Laura R. Woliver. Woliver finds that in this socially conservative, pro-business state, “Local officials mask repression with evasion by invoking their policymaking powerlessness and directing outraged citizens to state and federal authorities” (32). By contrast, Susan E. Clarke argues that the use of repression was justified by Denver’s leaders’ definition of “Operation Rescue as negative, outside groups harming all residents of the city” (p. 44). Clarke also chronicles how repression has its political limits when it might later be used to justify repressive actions of more favorable groups.
The majority of this book examines the activities of gay and lesbian rights activists’ demands for recognition and civil rights protections. With only 11 states having successfully passed legislation to protect the rights of gays and lesbians, this volume makes a convincing case that these activities have truly become local battles. However, what becomes apparent in these case studies is how similar such culture war disputes are to mainstream political discourse. Though the authors apply Sharp’s model appropriately, the successful struggle for these rights appears to hinge on the political might of the group, its level of political incorporation, and the general receptivity of the community.
Rick Musser’s chapter about a Baptist preacher’s strident anti-homosexual protest actions is the most compelling case study in this volume. In Fred Phelps v. Topeka, Musser illustrates the high costs a government may face in its attempts to repress a determined and amply resourced challenger of the status quo. By contrast, David L. Kirp and Ronald Bayer help redefine the dimensions of entrepreneurial instigation in their chapter on needle exchanges.
Paul Schumaker’s chapter investigates the moral principles that undergird individual roles adopted by elected representatives when confronting a culture war. Using open-ended interview data of local officials, Schumaker finds the majority of his respondents opposed to the notion of legislating morality. Specifically, Schumaker finds that local officials are reluctant to impose their own religious principles on citizens or force individual citizens to conform to a single notion of community values. And he finds support among his respondents for advocating some civic virtue principles, particularly among school board members, and equality principles “to end discrimination against minorities and gays” (p. 209).
The strength of this book is Sharp’s model of local government roles in culture wars. These case studies expand on the initial model by including three new roles: “agenda denial, nonresponsiveness, and symbolic responsiveness” (p. 220). They also help refine the notion of entrepreneurial instigation to include two different versions: principled and opportunistic. The book, however, is less successful when it comes to expanding the understanding of why certain roles are adopted. Though many explanations are explored, few are overwhelmingly convincing. Indeed, in many of the cities examined here, a city’s political economy and its concerns about economic development, particularly its developmental image, loom large in its culture wars.
