Casual conversations that take place among groups of acquaintances can have significant implications for political identity formation. The core thesis of this impressive study by Katherine Cramer Walsh maintains that small groups work collectively to create social contexts that influence members' understanding of politics. Individuals develop perspective through their identification and experiences with a group. She argues that people's ability to engage in “oppositional processing” by juxtaposing their own social position to that of others shapes their political outlook. Race, not political ideology, is the most salient influence on political judgment.

Walsh uses participant observation to examine the group dimensions of political talk. For almost two years, she dropped in on the informal gatherings of the “Old Timers,” a social group of middle-aged to older white men with conservative, patriotic political values who met daily at a corner store in Ann Arbor, Michigan. After winning the trust of most members, she was able to record their interactions, focusing particularly on their means of developing and clarifying social identities and the content of their discussions. Also at the corner store were a variety of racially diverse groups who had little interaction with the “Old Timers,” but whose physical presence provided a constant out-group reference point for them. For comparison, Walsh spent time with the “Craft Guild,” a women's group with the express purpose of working on projects to benefit their church. Because the “Guild” was an instrumental organization whose members had little in common, the group did not encourage the development of social identities, and political discussion rarely took place.

This study makes an important contribution to public opinion research by virtue of its innovative methodology. While political scientists rely almost exclusively on survey, interview, and focus group methodologies for studying opinion and identify formation, Walsh's participant observation strategy is vested in the tradition of well-respected work by E. E. LeMasters (Blue Collar Aristocrats, 1975) on working-class patrons at a Wisconsin tavern; Elliot Liebow (Tally's Corner, 1967) on low-income African American men in Washington, DC; Mitchell Duneier (Slim's Table, 1992) on African American men who meet at a Chicago cafeteria; and Nina Eliasoph (Avoiding Politics, 1998) on white suburbanites who frequent a country western bar. Participant observation is a welcome complement to studies employing survey and interview methodologies, with their inherent focus on the individual, and focus groups, with their artificial group dynamics simulated in a laboratory setting. Walsh observed the Old Timers in their own environment, which permitted her to document the informal rules that identified group members and set them apart from others who shared their space. This methodology also allows the conversation to be the unit of analysis, rather than the social network, as is usually the case. This focus has the virtue of enabling the researcher to examine directly how and why political discussions arise, rather than simply who is talking to whom.

Researchers employing participant observation run the risk of becoming co-opted by their subjects. Over time, Walsh's status with the Old Timers changed from observer to group member. However, her keen awareness of this transition, and her deliberate attempts to keep her interjections into the discussion to a minimum, prevent her from compromising her analytical purpose. The detailed methodological appendixes provide a road map for those seeking to undertake this type of study.

Another significant implication of this work is the challenge it poses to some core assumptions of social capital scholarship, which imply that enhancing opportunities for political discussion necessarily translates into positive democratic outcomes. As Walsh documents, not all face-to-face interactions strengthen social bonds or work to benefit the public good. Greater opportunity for political discussion does not ensure greater tolerance. In fact, personal interactions can widen social divisions, with group attachments strengthening as members continually define themselves in opposition to “those who are not one of us.”

Walsh's study begs us to consider that informal discussion may be as relevant to the development of democratic orientations among average citizens as the town-square-type deliberations favored by social capital theorists. One of the most consequential findings of the study challenges models positing that elite rhetoric translates directly into mass opinion and permeates citizen discourse. Political talk in social groups largely arises out of discussions of other things. The author provides compelling examples of how everyday conversations about life, entertainment, and sports can transmute into meaningful political discussions that mostly reinforce the dominant values of the group. Although average citizens may discuss particular topics promoted by elites and publicized by mass media, they do not necessarily adopt dominant news frames. Instead, they engage in a process Walsh terms circumventing, whereby they interpret news stories with first-hand points of view drawn from their own experiences and group interactions. While elite/media frames help citizens to make sense of public affairs by identifying the core ideas and actors involved in policies and events, the public does not necessarily buy into these interpretations.

Talking About Politics lays the groundwork for future investigations into the development of political talk among citizens. Such research would benefit from a more precise specification of what distinguishes political from nonpolitical discourse, especially as the boundaries between social and political discussion are highly fluid among the mass public. In addition, Walsh's rich case study of the Old Timers considers a group whose members were socialized to politics in a distant era and now have the time and inclination to become regulars at the corner store. It would be fruitful to investigate whether the trends she observes are generational, and to consider the dynamics of political talk within groups of young people. In addition, the racial dynamics that influence group political discussion, which Walsh begins to account for this in this study, might be further fleshed out by focusing on social groups with diverse membership.