Republicans and Democrats increasingly distrust, avoid, and wish harm upon those from the opposing party. They also increasingly reside among like-minded individuals and belong to social groups that share their political beliefs. While these factors can make it difficult to express a dissenting political opinion, digital and social media have given people new spaces for political discourse and community, and more control over who knows--and does not know--their political beliefs.
In Democracy Lives in Darkness, Emily Van Duyn looks at how these changes in the political and media landscape affect democracy. Van Duyn discovers and follows a secret political organization of progressive women in a conservative community in rural Texas. Its members, a mixture of real estate agents, school teachers, business owners, and retired grandmothers, met in secret to protect themselves from social, economic, and even physical retaliation by their conservative neighbors, friends, and family. They discussed immigrant rights, women's reproductive rights, racism, and intolerance of those of different racial/ethnic and cultural backgrounds in their community. Democracy Lives in Darkness is about this group: their daily lives, their choices, and ultimately, their incubation. But it is also about what led them to meet in secret--the political prejudice and hostility that marginalizes and makes people afraid, and the growing political, social, and geographic cleavages that now make even mainstream dissent dangerous.
Importantly, Van Duyn asks why mainstream partisans feel the need to hide their political beliefs from others, why they feel afraid of those from the opposite party, how they stay politically engaged in secret, and how this can transform them and their communities. The book challenges those who study democratic life to look beyond public political behavior and those who study big data and machine learning to consider the unique and meaningful qualities of studying the individual in context. Van Duyn challenges the assumption that the United States is a liberal democracy where ideas can be expressed freely and publicly. Rather, she suggests that democracy in the United States may exist in darkness, but, more optimistically, that it uses this darkness to move forward.
Democracy Lives in Darkness is about why people choose to hide their political beliefs from others and how they do so. Emily Van Duyn follows a secret political organization in rural Texas whose all-female membership meets in secret out of fear of their conservative spouses, friends, family, and neighbors. Drawing on in-depth interviews and observations of this group throughout the Trump administration, as well as U.S. representative survey data on secret political expression, this book explores what it means to be politically outnumbered and how intensifying political polarization has changed that experience over the past several years. Amidst these changes, Van Duyn argues that democracy in the United States may exist in darkness, but, more optimistically, that it uses this darkness to move forward.
This book will change the way we think about and measure political activism and partisanship. Van Duyn skillfully brings the reader inside a secret political organization-one acting on behalf of one of the two national political parties. These Democratic women cannot be Democrats in public due to their social and political context. Here, Van Duyn carefully demonstrates why the traditional observational measures of political participation miss the crucial social and political context that affect whether a person is willing or capable of admitting to their own political activity. This book uncovers a hidden world of political behavior, using robust qualitative analyses as well as survey research. Van Duyn has laid out a robust and revealing picture of American political action that will surely inspire new questions and approaches to the study of political activism and partisan behavior long into the future.
