Author Archives: Pengfei Liu

“Let them eat kale!”: Appeals to class-based resentment in American conservative opposition to climate change solutions

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Loredana Loy, Rachel Wetts, “Let them eat kale!”: Appeals to class-based resentment in American conservative opposition to climate change solutions, Social Problems, 2026;, spag003, https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spag003

How do conservative media commentators provoke public opposition to climate change solutions in the US? We provide evidence that appeals to class-based resentment against cultural elites are one prominent strategy to urge publics to reject climate mitigation strategies, particularly individual-level changes in diet and consumption. Analyzing media coverage of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from 1988–2021 across liberal, centrist, and conservative American outlets (N = 1788), we examine how commentators discuss the consumption of meat and animal products as contributors to climate change and dietary transition as a climate mitigation initiative. We find conservative rhetoric around this topic features class-based populism and ridicule of plant-based diets and vegetarianism as displays of cultural capital. Rather than relying on spreading misinformation or promoting scientific counter-claims, conservative commentators discredited these proposals by associating them with a rejected out-group, using moral and emotional language to stoke anger, resentment, but also humor. These findings suggest conservative rhetoric about dietary change as a climate solution appeals to class-based resentment, a strategy that may be becoming more prevalent as the Democratic Party becomes the party of highly-educated Americans. Our findings shed light on the important but often overlooked role of identity appeals in contemporary strategies of climate obstruction.

The Political Disconnect: Working-Class And Low-Income People On What Politics Means To Them And How They Might Be Mobilized

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Daniel Laurison, Kelly Diaz, Monica Guzman, Zachary Kreines, Kaj Tug Lee, Lydia Orr, and Sahiba Tandon. (2026). The Political Disconnect: Working-Class And Low-Income People On What Politics Means To Them And How They Might Be Mobilized. HEARD Initiative, Swarthmore College. 10.24968/2476-2458.soan.215.

A functioning democratic society must involve all kinds of people in deciding who will hold the power to enact laws and allocate tax dollars. However, working-class and low-income people vote at significantly lower rates than the more privileged in the US, and their participation has been declining in recent elections. In order to understand why those with fewer resources are less likely to vote and how this might change, a diverse group of researchers interviewed 232 low-income and working-class people (in every major racial group) from across Pennsylvania – 144 of whom either did not vote, or voted only occasionally. Our researchers spoke with each interviewee about their lives and communities, the issues they cared about, and their views on politics and voting. This report describes some of the key results of those interviews, and makes recommendations for increasing political participation among low-income and working-class people in the U.S. Almost every nonvoter or irregular voter we spoke with told us that politics seems disconnected from their lives in at least one of two ways. First, many feel like politics are by, for, and about people unlike themselves, people who are wealthier or more educated. Second, many see politics as corrupt and unable to create meaningful change, and believe that politicians are not interested in helping them or their communities. We make three recommendations based both on our interviews and on a broader body of research. 1) People want to believe that politics can meaningfully improve their lives – so they need to see clear connections between the real problems they face and potential and actual solutions in politics and policy. 2) People want to see themselves reflected in politics – so they need more people from low-income and working-class backgrounds working in every aspect of politics and government, at every level. 3) People want to feel genuinely listened to by those who have, or seek, political power – so they need politicians and other political groups to spend more time in low-income and working-class communities.

Correction to: Defining and Explaining Modes of Protesting: A Comparative‑Historical Analysis of Argentina and Chile

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Rossi, F.M., Somma, N.M. & Donoso, S. Defining and Explaining Modes of Protesting: A Comparative-Historical Analysis of Argentina and Chile. St Comp Int Dev (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12116-025-09480-4

We propose a novel conceptualization of predominant national “modes of protesting” to explain how the act of protest expresses historically specific forms of organizational intermediation. Using an original survey of demonstrators, we show that in the 2020s protesting in Argentina is primarily a collective and organic dynamic, while in Chile, it is commonly fragmented and privatized. To explain this contrast, we present historical narratives that focus on the length of the authoritarian regime and how the double transition to neoliberal economy and liberal democracy was pursued in each country, having the different sequence and timing of these processes diametrically opposite effects in the national modes of protesting. The collapse of the authoritarian regime and a division in democratic elites on the direction taken by the double transition may explain Argentina’s collective and organic national mode of protesting. The scattered sequence of pendular reforms that divided the political establishment in two projects and the disconnected timing of authoritarian repressive periods and neoliberal reforms may explain the preservation of a resilient movement-based tradition that had deeply penetrated Argentine society. Instead, in Chile, the modification of the national mode of protesting was a result of a constant sequence of reforms and a connected timing of authoritarianism and neoliberalism that destroyed 1970s organic networks, and a neoliberal democracy that kept the population weak and territorially fragmented, while a cohesive and insulated political establishment neutralized any reformist impetus. We discuss how the concept of modes of protesting opens a research agenda with implications for many countries and world regions.

White-Collar Blues: The Making of the Transnational Turkish Middle Class

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Yavaş, Mustafa. 2025. White-Collar Blues: The Making of the Transnational Turkish Middle Class: Columbia University Press. 

Consider the lucky few. They studied hard and aced high-stakes tests, survived demanding schooling and extracurriculars, graduated from top colleges and immediately landed high-pay, high-status corporate positions in tall buildings. What happens after this middle-class dream of fast-track careers comes true?

White-Collar Blues follows the Turkish members of the global elite workforce as they are selected into, survive within, and opt out of coveted employment at transnational corporations. State-employed doctors, lawyers, and engineers were long seen as role models until Turkey followed the global tide of neoliberalism and began to embrace freer circulation of capital. As world-renowned corporations transformed Istanbul into a global city, Turkey’s best and brightest have increasingly sought employment at brand-name firms. Despite achieving upward mobility within and beyond Turkey, however, many Turkish professionals end up feeling disappointed, burned out, and trapped in their corporate careers.

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Bringing War Back In: Victory, Defeat, and the State in Nineteenth-Century Latin America

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Schenoni, L. 2024. Bringing War Back In: Victory, Defeat, and the State in Nineteenth-Century Latin America: Cambridge University Press.

Bringing War Back In provides a fresh theory connecting war and state formation that incorporates the contingency of warfare and the effects of war outcomes in the long run. The book demonstrates that international wars in nineteenth-century Latin America triggered state-building, that the outcomes of those wars affected the legitimacy and continuity of such efforts, and that the relative capacity of states in this region today continues to reflect those distant processes. Combining comparative historical analysis with cutting edge social science methods, the book provides a comprehensive picture of state formation in nineteenth-century Latin America that is compelling for readers across disciplines, breathes new life into bellicist approaches to state formation, and offers a novel framework to explain variation in state capacity across Latin America and the world.