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I was recently turned onto this idea called "Relationships vs. Attributes" by my sociologist friend, Zach Wehrwein. It's been changing the way I see everything in American politics. Here's the idea: <1/14>
To interpret people based on attributes you ask, "What's their race, their gender, their class, their education level, their geographic location, etc." To interpret people based on relationships you ask, "What social networks are they embedded in?" <2/14>
It's easier to poll and identify individual attributes than it is to identify social networks. So we often use attributes as a crude proxy for relationships. But in the end, the relationships tell us more about someone than the attributes. <3/14>
You can see how this works with outlier communities. Take these two electoral maps: <4/14>
Here's a map that shows where third party Presidential candidate Evan McMullin succeeded in 2016. It maps perfectly with Mormon population. That's because the social network of Mormons is strong and the social network got activated for McMullin. <5/14> 
Here's the Nader electoral map in 2000. There's these pockets where he has higher vote totals—Boulder, West Mass, Berkeley, Vermont, Austin. This is because there happen to be lefty social networks there, not because all these places share some individual attribute. <6/14>
Why is the women or Catholic vote very split (~50% or so for Trump) but, say, the Mormon or Black protestant votes are each very unified? Because women and Catholics are not in dense social networks sharing that attribute, while Mormons and Black protestants are. <7/14>
One final example of the different ways of seeing politics: Take college education and its affect on politics. Those who see the world through attributes would say it must be something about the education, itself, that changes your politics... <8/14>
...But those who see the world through relationships would say it's something about the social networks that college embeds you in that changes your politics. <9/14>
I couldn't find the exact study, but I remember reading one somewhere that said those who commute to college and live at home don't change their politics as much as those who live on and around campus. It's the networks, not the attributes that change you! <10/14>
I had another revelation about this after interviewing union organizer Jane McAlevey: currentaffairs.org/2019/04/jane-m…. As I listened to her, it hit me that union organizers are the major people in politics who get that it's all about networks instead of attributes... <11/14>
She explained that an organizer's job is to map out the current social networks of a workplace and then work to activate & weave together those social networks around a cause. In fact, they often have to weave these networks together across attribute divides, like race. <12/14>
Meanwhile, election consultants are stuck in the attribute lens—they slice & dice everyone by individual attributes and micro-target them based on who, exactly, they appear to be on paper. But most people decide their votes based on the chatter in their social networks! <13/14>
I'm trying to work this idea up into an essay about "relationship vs. attributes" and American politics today, so if you have anything I should read on this lens shift — or any examples of this lens shift in action — let me know. <14/14>
