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Abstract: This paper contributes to the existing literature on positionality, ethics, research design, and the politics of the field by sketching power relations between an American researcher and Vietnamese respondents in Vietnam. I illustrate how two types of investments, financial compensation and gift exchange, “live” in the field as arbitrators of power relations between researcher and respondent. Specifically, I argue that financial and symbolic investments are important yet neglected aspects of the fieldwork experience for both investigators and research subjects because they allow both parties to deploy and negotiate multiple positionalities in the field. In sum, the paper makes three points: it outlines the multiple positionalities at play as scholars plan and execute their research; it introduces the concept of investment to field methods, with a focus on financial compensation and gift giving; and it demonstrates investment’s role in the negotiation of power between researcher and respondent. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This special issue offers papers that together reach toward sociological understanding of “meaning.” We contextualize that effort in intersecting intellectual trends—the emerging relational sociology of networks and meanings, which has progressed steadily since the 1990s, and the diverse enterprise of sociology of language, which is much less established in the U.S. Given space limitations, we acknowledge others’ work but concentrate on Harrison White''s turn to language and linguistics, which influenced all the papers herein. We highlight each paper''s contribution to a new relational sociology and new understanding of language as mechanism and methodology, which might change the study of agentic actions, social processes, politics, networks and institutions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article presents a comment about Ron Johnson's research about the issues of malapportionment and gerrymandering in the British context that can be understood by the students of American politics. The author mentioned that the paper showed the relevance of constituency marginality to party effort and success as portrayed in the United States congressional elections. The author also reported that his own paper titled "Malapportionment, Gerrymandering, and Party Fortunes in Congressional Elections" which addressed several similar topics applied to partisan bias in the U.S. House elections during the early part of 1970's. An updated history of partisan biases in the elections in the United States is also presented.

This paper traces the development of an ideology for US government publication, focusing primarily on dominant strands of political thought during the antebellum period, the gilded age, and the progressive era. This paper examines political thought that inhibited the development of an ideology of US government publication, such as the antistatism of Thomas Jefferson and the Social Darwinism of Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner; it focuses also on American political thought that fostered its development, such as the Positivism of Lester Frank Ward, the Pragmatism of John Dewey, and the Progressivism of Herbert Croly. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper sheds light on two age-old questions of interest group behavior: how have interest group coalition strategies changed over time and which factors determine whether interest groups work together? Through the creation of a new network measure of interest group coalitions based on cosigner status to United States Supreme Court amicus curiae briefs, we illuminate the central players and overall characteristics of this dynamic network from 1930 to 2009. We present evidence of an increasingly transitive network resembling a host of tightly grouped factions and leadership hub organizations employing mixed coalition strategies. We also model the attribute homophily and structure of the present-day network. We find assortative mixing of interest groups based on industry area, budget, sales and membership. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: High quality election districting plans provide representation to the broadest array of demographic groups possible. In rapidly diversifying countries such as the United States this goal will become of ever greater importance in the future. The quality and legality of districting plans are typically evaluated on the basis of a long list of criteria including contiguity, compactness, population equality, racial equity, the avoidance of splitting local government subdivisions, and the maintenance of communities of interest, among others. Do these criteria facilitate or inhibit the creation of districting plans facilitating high quality representation? Using the perspective of social justice, this paper evaluates current traditional redistricting evaluative criteria based upon the clarity of their goals and whether there are generally accepted methods for judging a plan''s quality. It finds that the goals of some criteria are ill-defined with others having no accepted protocols to judge a plan''s fidelity to these goals. It also argues that political geographers can have an important role in further refining the purpose and measurement of the current evaluative criteria used in the redistricting process. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Television has been a significant factor in American political life since the expansion of network news in the early 1960s. It serves as the primary means by which Americans get their political information. Likewise, it develops their sense of how politics and politicians operate in our democracy. This paper examines how enhanced television technologies might be applied to political programming, as well as the effects such changes might have on the future of participatory democracy. Following a series of conjectures regarding the future application of enhanced television technologies to politics, the potential benefits and drawbacks of interactive television on governance are discussed. Using the social shaping approach to technology foresight, it is demonstrated that forecasts of technology and governance are ultimately dependent upon the normative assumptions of the investigator. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Ideological self-identification in the United States is well measured for the period 1970 to the present. Many survey measures are available and they are posed with considerable frequency and regularity. It is thus a relatively straightforward methodological exercise to combine them into a single measure of the American public''s latent disposition to identify as liberal or conservative. What is problematic about this state of affairs is that the availability of these good measures occurs after a number of important changes in the American political context, changes that, we argue, have affected how Americans conceive of ideological terms and how scholars think about self-identification in the modern electorate. This paper seeks to measure and explain ideological self-identification in the time before modern survey research. We undertake an historical analysis of scattered pieces of public opinion data before 1970, assembling the pieces to build a time series of self-identification from 1937 to 2006. We then begin attempts at explaining the now observable, and often dramatic, changes in this series. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The concept of environmental injustice raises difficult questions about on how best to measure and address environmental inequities across space, and environmental justice politics are permeated by considerable debate over the nature and spatial extent of both problem and possible solutions. This paper theorizes the politics of environmental justice as a politics of scale in order to explore how environmental justice activists respond to the scalar ambiguity inherent in the political concept of environmental justice. With a case study of a controversy over a proposed polyvinylchloride production facility in rural Convent, Louisiana, I develop the concept of scale frames and counter-scale frames as strategic discursive representations of a social grievance that do the work of naming, blaming, and claiming, with meaningful reference to particular geographic scales. The significance of scale is expressed alternatively within these frames as an analytical spatial category, as scales of regulation, as territorial framework(s) for cultural legitimacy, and as a means of inclusion, exclusion and legitimation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Given the social and spatial dynamics of the electoral college, small groups of voters can profoundly shape national outcomes. This paper examines the 2000 election in Florida in three ways. First, it offers historical depth by comparing and contrasting the 2000 and 1876 presidential elections. Second, it portrays the spatial distribution of votes across the state. Third, it applies a combinatorial analysis of the power of small groups of Florida voters to influence the 2000 presidential election to demonstrate the discrepancy between their influence compared to those of voters nationwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presented here by Ron Johnston is not only a valuable contribution to the literature of bias in district-based elections, but also a timely call for a re-invigorated spatial analysis of electoral systems. The metric Johnston adopts for measuring this bias has the advantages of being relatively simple in both its application and the interpretation of its results, and appears promising enough to warrant its future use. In these comments. I discuss areas for possible improvement, particularly in applying the methodology to the particular circumstances of U.S. elections, and briefly examine how his findings inform more general questions of intent in partisan and racial gerrymandering. Finally, I second his call for political geographers to pay more attention to the spatial analysis of elections, a topic of considerable interest to politicians, social scientists and voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]