In The Obligation Mosaic, Allison Anoll examines how social norms are associated with political behavior for African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and whites in the United States. Through her Racialized Norms Model outlined in Chapter 2, Anoll develops expectations that there are some meaningful shared social norms across each of these racial groups, but that they may manifest politically in varied ways due to a combination of historical and contemporary factors (e.g., social context, racial segregation, group activism). But what social norms may be relevant for understanding decisions to head to the polls or participate in other higher-cost forms of political activism?
In Chapter 3, Anoll conducts a set of twenty-three interviews with African Americans and Asian Americans. Through these conversations she identifies two norms that she expects to have differing political impacts across all four racial groups. The first is the “Honoring Ancestors Norm,” which is a “basic, widely shared value to recognize and respect the stories, struggles, and traditions of those in the past” (p. 47). For African Americans, this involves an explicitly political commitment to honor prior generations’ struggles for civil rights and voting rights through continued protest and voting efforts. For Asian Americans, Anoll finds that this norm was less political but entailed a focus on upholding culture and traditions—e.g., learning the language of one’s ancestors as a way of honoring them. The second norm is the “Helping Hands Norm,” or a desire to help others including those in need. For both Black and Asian American interview participants, Anoll notes that an emphasis is placed on helping community members and looking to improve their surroundings. Still, the political implications of these norms varied between groups—with African Americans viewing grassroots policy change as part and parcel of the Helping Hands Norm, while Asian Americans emphasized more direct service in lieu of political efforts.
Anoll then builds from her theoretical foundations and qualitative data to develop and test generalized expectations of these norms on a nationally representative survey of African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and whites. These efforts in Chapters 4 and 5 underscore variation in how these social norms influence group politics. For example, highlighting that 1) Black and white Americans are more likely to associate the Honoring Ancestors Norm with politics than are Asian Americans or Latinos; and 2) minoritized racial groups are more likely than whites to link politics with the Helping Hands Norm. Thus, the link between these social norms and politics are nuanced across racial groups.
With this in mind, Anoll spends the final two substantive chapters of the book examining the influence of these politicized norms on political behavior. She explores the connection between the norms and voting records from multiple elections between 2012 and 2016. Here, she demonstrates that the Honoring Ancestors Norm is consistently associated with voter turnout in both federal and local elections across groups. Moreover, if we lived in a world in which these groups did not subscribe to the Honoring Ancestors Norm, Anoll underscores that levels of voter turnout among minoritized groups would be significantly reduced relative to white voter turnout. In contrast, the Helping Hands Norm is only associated with voter turnout in local (but not national) elections and in other higher-cost forms of participation (e.g., protest).
Overall, The Obligation Mosaic seeks to understand both historical and contemporary social forces influencing political attitudes and behavior. Anoll should be applauded for her efforts towards creating a generalized theory that applies across racial groups, while also acknowledging the complexity and nuance required to reflect the distinct histories and experiences of the four racial groups under study. The novel theory, measures, and findings add to the conversation around an age-old question in political science: What motivates people to vote? Anoll’s inclusion of social norms in answering this question—and, particularly, the emphasis on how these norms are racialized in different ways across groups—is a clearly meaningful contribution to the literature. Moving forward, scholars, activists, and campaign organizers interested in questions of voter mobilization, turnout, and political behavior more broadly will turn to Anoll’s work as a blueprint for understanding how social norms influence political engagement. It is also easy to imagine future work building from and extending the Racialized Norms Model, including potentially incorporating other groups—e.g., Middle Eastern/North African (MENA) individuals or Native Americans—and further enriching understandings of the background history and contextual nuance across all of these racial groups.
Furthermore, Anoll’s discussion of how these norms can be used by political candidates and campaigns as resources to increase turnout underscores a core finding from the book: Without the political manifestations of these social norms (and particularly among Black Americans), voter turnout levels would be much lower. This suggests the potential for further political mobilization efforts by tapping into these social norms. As Anoll summarizes the implications of her findings on this score: “Organizing efforts that seek to connect these latent resources with politics may prove an avenue to increasing political participation in otherwise low-propensity communities” (p. 179). It would be valuable for future research to examine this point more closely. That is, what campaign messaging or strategies are most effective for activating these social norms? How does this vary across groups? Are there ways to activate these norms for all Americans or for some set of groups in combination (e.g., as discussed in Efren Pérez’s Diversity’s Child: People of Color and the Politics of Identity, 2021)? Are there ways to induce a stronger link between politics and these social norms?
Another avenue for future research would be to deepen the story of how these social norms matter for politics by speaking with a broader set of interview participants. At the core of Anoll’s generalized theory is an acknowledgement that each group has divergent histories and contexts. Anoll’s interviews with Asian and Black Americans lay an important foundation for understanding which norms are meaningful for politics, as well as how this varies across two groups with diverse histories within the United States. Still, I was left wondering how additional conversations would have unfolded—and how they would compare and contrast with one another—if we had also heard directly from Latinos and whites. It would be powerful to hear more about this background, history, and the makings of politicized social norms in people’s own words from other groups. For example, it would be especially interesting to hear how white Americans speak to the Honoring Ancestors Norm given that, as Anoll notes, their history is quite distinct from that of minoritized groups in terms of access to power and resources. Thus, a broader set of interviews would help to weave together the richness of story that is only possible through qualitative means.
Finally, in the spirit of the “Critical Dialogue” between Anoll’s book and Mara Ostfeld and my book Skin Color, Power, and Politics in America (which Anoll is also reviewing in this issue), it is worthwhile to consider how these two pieces of scholarship relate. Anoll’s framework emphasizing the importance of social norms to politics raises interesting questions of how this might apply to the realm of skin tone. Like Anoll, Ostfeld and I argue that history and context across groups are central to understanding the relative importance of skin tone to political attitudes today. Anoll’s work suggests that further examination of how people discuss the histories or norms surrounding skin tone in their community may be especially valuable. For example, is it possible that different perceived norms surrounding skin tone emerge across the skin tone spectrum or across racial groups? If so, what are these norms? And how do they relate to political attitudes or behavior across groups? These would be interesting questions to take up in future research, particularly through an additional series of in-depth interviews complementing those conducted by Anoll.
In conclusion, The Obligation Mosaic serves as a shining example of the care and nuance required to both develop a generalized theory across multiple groups and to conduct a rigorous mixed methods study. The qualitative component Anoll incorporates provides depth that is not available by examining purely observational or experimental data. In short, this book is required reading for scholars interested in questions of democracy, political engagement, and political behavior.
