“Close to home”: The work of avoiding politics

Abstract

Was she really as small-minded as she claimed to be? ` I care about issues that are close to home,'' ``I care if it aiects me personally,'' ``I care if it's for my children'': these are the familiar phrases that many Americans use to explain political involvement and apathy. Journalists, activists, and theorists often take these phrases at face value; politicians base social policies on them, trying to play to voters whom they imagine to be self-interested and short-sighted, cutting funds for projects that do not seem ``close to home.'' The phrases are usually interpreted as transparently obvious indications of citizens' self-interest and lack of broad political concern ^ their ` small-mindedness.'' But these insistant, extravagant expressions of self-interest do not simply indicate clear, straightforward self-interest or parochial thinking. The phrases work hard. Activists, intellectuals, and other concerned citizens often assume that someone like Sherry just doesn't care or is self-interested or ignorant; we try to draw people like her into political participation by impressing upon them that they should care (perhaps by telling them how nuclear war might aiect their kids), or telling them not to be so self-interested.