PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Koenig, Biko
TI  - Politicizing Status Loss Among Trump Supporters in 2020
AID  - 10.7758/RSF.2022.8.6.04
DP  - 2022 Nov 01
TA  - RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences
PG  - 69--86
VI  - 8
IP  - 6
4099  - http://www.rsfjournal.org/content/8/6/69.short
4100  - http://www.rsfjournal.org/content/8/6/69.full
AB  - Status loss—real or perceived—is seen as a key characteristic of how Donald Trump supporters make sense of the world. Drawing on five months of ethnographic and interview-based research, I argue that the motivations of Trump supporters are not only about status loss and anxiety, but also about the perceived injustice of it relative to competing notions of status worthiness that political opponents offer. I explore the process by which status-based claims are developed, deployed, and interpreted by campaign actors, volunteers, and voters. The political action of Trump supporters was spurred by emotionally laden rejections of status beliefs that did not center working-class values of hard work, manual occupations, and small-town family-centric culture. I show how the politicization of collective identities among the Trump supporters interviewed was enabled through a multilevel process that included the work of “identity entrepreneurs” in shaping the form and direction of the politicization process.