The Space between Us: Social Geography and Politics

by Ryan D. Enos

The Space between Us brings the connection between geography, psychology, and politics to life. By going into the neighborhoods of real cities, Enos shows how our perceptions of racial, ethnic, and religious groups are intuitively shaped by where these groups live and interact daily. Through the lens of numerous examples across the globe and drawing on a compelling combination of research techniques including field and laboratory experiments, big data analysis, and small-scale interactions, this timely book provides a new understanding of how geography shapes politics and how members of groups think about each other. Enos' analysis is punctuated with personal accounts from the field. His rigorous research unfolds in accessible writing that will appeal to specialists and non-specialists alike, illuminating the profound effects of social geography on how we relate to, think about, and politically interact across groups in the fabric of our daily lives.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Psychology, Sociology, Race, Political Science, Urbanism

318 pages, Paperback

Published December 31, 2020

About the author

Ryan D. Enos is an Associate Professor at the Department of Government at Harvard University. He is also affiliated with the Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Center for American Political Studies, Center for Geographic Analysis, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the Ph.D. Program in Government & Social Policy.

he is a member of egap: evidence in governance and politics and also a Guest Professor of Political Science at University of Copenhagen.

He directs the Working Group on Political Psychology and Behavior (WoGPop) and am also affiliated with the Behavioral Insights Group, Foundations of Human Behavior Initiative, and the Experiential Learning Lab (TELLab).

Reviews

[Jack · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an EXCELLENT book. Enos's research is thorough and interesting, and he does a fantastic job of explaining it for a more general audience. He engaged in statistical analyses and some really interesting experiments to back up his thesis. Enos also provides a useful explanation for the Trump victory. Where people live, work, and move around us matters. This also means when these people are "the others." How our communities are shaped, how much segregation or integration exists, and how much interaction we have outside of our comfort zone impacts how we think and vote. One particularly interesting experiment involved a train station serving an anglo and left leaning area of Boston. In interviews, the people commuting to work expressed liberal sentiments on a whole host of issues, including immigration. But after the "treatment," the liberal commuters suddenly expressed an increased "tough on immigration" sentiment. What was the treatment? Having just a few Latino men appear at the train station for a couple days in a row. The anglo folks noticed "the others," and the salience of their presence changed how they viewed the issue. (I may have gotten some details of that experiment wrong, but I believe I covered the important stuff.) So imagine the increased presence of Latinos showing up in places like PA and other midwestern areas. Again, interesting stuff. Also, if you want to see the country move past this idea of seeing newcomers as outsiders or others, there's no easy fix. But this is an important work for understanding modern American politics.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 5 out of 5]

These marvelous studies of social geography, like all great social science, reveal the hidden forces that are too big or too small to see with the naked eye.

Enos is a methodological omnivore of exceptional creativity and ambition who knocks it out of the park in study after study. From the housing projects of Chicago’s South side to the limestone walls of Jerusalem, Enos shows, with surgical precision, how our lives are unconsciously shaped by our arrangements on the surface of the Earth. This rigorous, insightful, and often poignant book will change how you see the world and your place in it.

Joshua Greene, Harvard University, Massachusetts

Ryan D. Enos charts new analytic territory in demonstrating the spatial foundations of political inequality. Not content to rest on traditional approaches, Enos sets a high evidentiary bar by conducting a rigorous set of original and creative studies - including both laboratory and field experiments - that show how social geography gets into our minds and ultimately shapes the public sphere. Methods designed to assess causality and social mechanisms are integrated with personal observations and descriptions of everyday life in the divided cities that still characterize America.

On the evidence presented, researchers and policymakers should reject the common idea that geographical space is merely a container for action and confront that it is instead a driver of political life.

Robert J. Sampson, Harvard University, Massachusetts

In this lucid and deeply original book, Enos demonstrates the profound consequences of separation on politics, not just in America but in any segregated society. Using basic, well-established features of human psychology as his foundation, he provides a compelling alternative to narrow conceptions of political behavior as a simple matter of material self-interest, and draws a richer portrait of the ways that space, geography, and group allegiance affect the way we think and vote.

Dylan Matthews, Senior Correspondent, Vox

Among the most important and fascinating books about the uniquely psychological consequences of political geography ever written.

Enos’s theory is not about the somewhat narrow consequences of rather intimate, interpersonal contact, but about the impact of sharing geographic space with strangers of a different race. His theory.… comes to some less than optimistic predictions about our ability to live in harmony within densely populated but racially segregated places like most major cities around the world.

His evidence from a variety of sources - lab experiments, natural experiments, and observational studies - supports the notion that close contact combined with segregation along racial, ethnic, or religious lines powerfully undermines support for policies that might benefit groups other than our own. It is sobering news, but perhaps now that he has uncovered the causes we can begin to imagine more effective ways forward.

Nicholas Valentino, University of Michigan

‘From a perspective that considers geography, psychology, and politics, this book offers a fascinating comparative case-study approach to examining the reasons different groups of people remain separated, though they live in close proximity.

A. E. Wohlers, Choice

The book is very accessible, written in an easy style with personal exemplars used to illustrate the main arguments..... This is an important book. Those who contributed ‘puffs’ for its back cover are lavish in their praise, and rightly so. The research reported, based on firm theoretical foundations, moves contextual analyses significantly forward and is attractively presented. It should be widely read, cited and extended by researchers in a broad range of fields.

Ron Johnston, Urban Studies

The reader is left with the sense of having watched a master artisan at work. Even if preliminary guidelines, drawn to establish accurate perspective, may initially seem overly technical representations for the mess of social life, after Enos’s diligent layering of detail and definition, the picture that emerges changes the way you view the real world. Enos has made the space between us a necessary consideration for understanding interaction and cooperation in diverse social landscapes.

David J. Amaral, Journal of Urban Affairs

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The wild Amazone

Game changing insight on social geography, and how the world around us changes the way we live, think and act

Enos, in this insightful analysis, shows that social geography is real and it matters.

He demonstrates through argument and experiment that the places in which we live significantly impact the way we think, act, associate and vote today.

To oversimplify: "The Big Sort" asked the question "how does the way we think affect where we live?"

This insightful book turns the question around, asking "how does where we live affect the way we think and act?" That is social geography.

Does this matter?

Go to any major U.S. city today and you will find segregration and division - people sorted into different neighborhoods by race and/or class.

Walking three blocks in one direction in Boston, New York, LA or Chicago can put you in a different world.

And these divisions continue to change quickly, particularly through immigration.

Enos shows that this has changed our thinking and our voting, with outcomes that are often unintended and poorly understood.

By adding to our fundamental understanding of the mechanisms at hand, "The Space Between Us" also helps us better comprehend the issues of the day, including immigration, race relations, urban zoning, and understanding the red/blue dichotomy.

Enos also goes beyond theory, considering how policy makers might act on this knowledge, perhaps with an outcome of increasing understanding and reducing the polarization that is endemic to U.S. society today.

"The Space Between Us" is highly recommended reading for anyone interested in the foundations of opinion, voting and action, whether a thinker, activist, researcher, student or policy maker.

Michael Putnam

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was waiting for a book from the library, so I decided to go back to this one, sitting on my Kindle from when I had bought it a few years ago. It's very dry but interesting, as the author details his research on how geography influences how different racial or ethnic groups perceive each other. Some of his conclusions seem overstated, and some of his studies under-powered, but several--particularly the ones around the housing projects in Chicago--are compelling and convincing. Essentially, a large, concentrated group of "other" people nearby, or the emergence of a small minority where previously there was none, precipitates a backlash in a way that more gradual changes from, say, an "other" group comprising 20% of an area's to 25% does not. The policy implications are less clear, but at the very least it's good to understand this phenomenon better.

[Jonathan Cervas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I often think about cities and geography more generally as a construct dictated by economic forces, which then shape our politics. Enos offers a different take, one in which our politics is shaped by the geographic arrangement of the population — the population often placed on a map through government sponsored segregation, or through a Shelling effect — in which the segregated minority (out group) often has more hostility directed at it because of its salience heightened by its size and proximity. This book, though not for the casual reader, is quite the definitive work on the sociological nature of geography and politics.

[Tal Wanish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enlightening view into how our place in our communities can unintentionally/unconsciously affect our thoughts and feelings towards the people around us, voting habits, etc. Very thorough and well established. Definitely more of a 250 page scholarly article than a popsci book. Dense but enjoyable.

[Christopher Nies · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book about implicit bias, and how human nature sometimes needs to be fought