A political topic need not yield public-spirited talk, nor vice versa
Evidence
So, a group could have a topic that I might consider ”political” but not treat it with public-spirited conversation, and vice versa. During the Gulf War, I heard a conversation in the recreation groups about how the war might impinge on members’ travel plans. That was not a publicly minded conversation. On the other hand, a conversation in the same group about who would cook the food for a potluck, with jokes about whether the men could do anything other than bring Kentucky Fried, boiled water, and microwaved burritos, came closer to being a publicly minded conversation, since it referred to systematic gender differences, with a slight twinge of righteous indignation. — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics, 152
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- XREF: Contradicts the common assumption that political topics naturally produce civic engagement; the potluck-evokes-gender example shows solidarity forming around shared food labor, not enemy threats.