Social Structures Surrounding Political Identity

Social structure is the framework of an identity; it is made up of many different elements of one’s life and can be based upon factors such as race and ethnicity, gender, age, and socioeconomic status. They can include societal patterns, statuses, roles and multiple other aspects (Crawford and Novak 2816). The social structures typically surrounding political identity differ of course, according to which affiliation one identifies with. However, society tells us that someone who identifies themselves with such political affiliations as previously mentioned will typically have education, religion, family and government as some of their main social structures with social groups such as coworkers, classmates and friends. Within those structures there are numerous statuses surrounding political affiliation, the focal few being: socioeconomic status, occupation, and education level. In a study involving …show more content…
While individuals who had lower income favored the Democratic Party. Within the same study the association between occupation and political affiliation was also determined. Those who held higher positions shared more conservative values than individuals working in maintenance and manual labor (Raymond and Richard). As an additional example another study found consistently that college professors and social scientists identify with liberal values, both the level of education these individuals had and the occupation they held predisposed them to identify with the Democratic Party. They were characterized as being more open minded and conformed better to the liberal agenda (Eitzen and Maranell). These examples exemplify the distinction between the occupations we choose, the amount of money we make, and the level of education we complete and the political party we identify with and what characteristics surround these social