Social science and popular media have described political polarization as a threat to democracy and effective policy. Scholars connect right/left political divides to macro-level social divisions, such as those between rural and urban residents, environmentalists and farmers, and pro-versus anti-government sentiments. While previous scholars have complicated these dichotomies, political polarization scholarship often seeks out evidence of polarization without considering these complications. In addition, we know little about how polarization is affecting community responses to social problems. This paper explores the rhetoric of political and social polarization as it appears in community responses to a particular social problem, the decline of small and mid-sized dairy farms in southern Wisconsin. During interviews, farmers, municipal leaders, and community members indeed used polarizing rhetoric and identified polarization as a problem in their communities. We argue, though, that the connections between commonly bifurcated identities, including a common attachment to the land and relationships across the rural–urban continuum, are equally important. We conclude by encouraging policy responses meant to address the fallout of the loss of mid-sized dairy farms to draw on these connections to avoid inadvertently reinforcing political divisions.

中文翻译：

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破坏政治两极分化：政治在解释威斯康星州南部农场损失中的作用☆

社会科学和大众媒体将政治两极分化描述为对民主和有效政策的威胁。学者们将左右政治分歧与宏观层面的社会分歧联系起来，例如城乡居民之间、环保主义者与农民之间的分歧，以及支持与反政府的情绪。虽然以前的学者使这些二分法变得复杂，但政治两极分化学术往往在不考虑这些复杂性的情况下寻找两极分化的证据。此外，我们对两极分化如何影响社区对社会问题的反应知之甚少。本文探讨了社区对特定社会问题（威斯康星州南部中小型奶牛场的衰落）的反应中出现的政治和社会两极分化的言论。在采访中，农民、市领导和社区成员确实使用了两极分化言论，并认为两极分化是他们社区的一个问题。不过，我们认为，常见的分歧身份之间的联系，包括对土地的共同依恋以及城乡连续体的关系，同样重要。最后，我们鼓励采取政策应对措施，以解决中型奶牛场消失的后果，利用这些联系，以避免无意中加剧政治分歧。