Método experimental

Cutler (2007) is among the first public opinion scholars (of which I am aware) to have argued for the importance of taking the relationship between local interests and individual

preferences seriously. Following him, I label the view that individual preferences are shaped by a concern for the well-being of the locale, independent of ego-tropic or sociotropic concerns, a

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“local-tropic” conception of individual preferences.4 _{On the local-tropic account, “citizens think}

of their locale as a relevant group”, and as a result, “features of the locale are therefore linked to political attitudes through a calculation of local group interest (Cutler 2007, 577; his italics). This suggests that in developing a preliminary account of local-tropic preferences, we must explain why individuals come to view their “locale as a relevant group” whose interests they should care about (for reasons that cannot be reduced to the implications of local welfare for their own personal well-being). In short, this sub-section addresses the following question: why might individuals come to view the “locale”, and its place-specific interests, as an intrinsic object of concern? Developing a systematic answer to this question is an important area for future research; the relatively few existing studies on local-tropic preferences tend to gloss over this question, and move quickly to an empirical consideration of whether local-tropic preferences are indeed salient in some specific empirical context. Here, I cannot offer an extended examination of the theoretical or philosophical question of why individuals might be “local-tropic”;

nevertheless, it is worthwhile to briefly set out some possibilities that could be pursued further in future work.

One possibility is that we could ground local-tropic preferences in the human tendency, all else equal5, to “feel closer to people who live nearby than to those who live farther away” (Kang 2016, 351). Spatial distance, on this account, mediates the emotional force of our affective ties to others; the emotional and psychological force of these ties weakens with spatial distance, and intensifies as a function of spatial proximity. This is of course a very old idea about the

4 _{I should note, however, that he considers a concern for local environments that derives from individual}

material interests to fall under the heading of “local-tropic” preferences, in addition to an intrinsic concern for local environments. I only consider the latter to be “local-tropic” preferences. This is for reasons of clarity.

5

Throughout the following discussion about how our affective ties to others weaken with physical distance, it is important to keep in mind that the ceteris paribus assumption holds.

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spatial structure of our moral sentiments, one that can be traced back to the Stoic idea of

oikeiosis, according to which “human affection and care are ordered spatially around the self in a

concentric pattern” (Forman 2010, 8). This spatially explicit view of our moral sentiments has influenced thinkers into the modern era, especially in the Scottish Enlightenment; perhaps the thinker who engaged the idea of oikeiosis most deeply was Adam Smith, whose Theory of Moral

Sentiments took oikeiosis as an empirically valid starting point for thinking about human moral

psychology (Forman 2010; Forman 2005, 201). Viner (1972) notes that Smith follows the Stoics in positing that, “spatial distance operates to intensify psychological distance” and that

the sentiments weaken progressively as one moves from one’s immediate family to one’s intimate friends, to one’s neighbors in a small community, to fellow- citizens in a great city, to members in general of one’s own country, to foreigners, to mankind taken in the large, to the inhabitants, if any, of distant planets (Viner; quoted in Forman 2010, 125).

It is worth noting that Smith and the Stoics disagree about whether “this phenomenon of fading or weakening sentiment that corresponds to an increase in physical distance” is morally problematic, and whether the affective bias toward the spatially proximate is something that humans should strive to transcend. The cosmopolitan project of the Stoics was to “collapse the natural concentric structure of human relationships through the proper use of reason”, while Smith viewed such a project as “absurd and unreasonable” (Forman 2005, 201). In other words, while Smith and the Stoics both agreed, as an empirical and descriptive matter, that our sense of fellow-feeling and “affection evolves through our experiences living in close proximity with others”, they disagreed, as an ethical matter, about whether this was a cause for moral concern (201).

We also see such a pattern of agreement about the empirical tendency for our affective connections to others to decline as a function of spatial distance, alongside disagreement about

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the ethical justifiability of our partiality towards the spatially proximate, reproduced in important debates about global justice in our own time. For instance, consider Singer’s (1971) famous argument that the failure of wealthy-country individuals to dedicate the bulk of their personal resources (essentially, everything beyond what is necessary to merely subsist) towards famine relief in the developing world was morally akin to an individual’s failure to interrupt an

afternoon stroll in order to rescue (at a relatively trivial personal cost) a child seen drowning in a small pond along the route (231). This argument is counter-intuitive, perhaps even shocking, precisely because it dismisses our intuition that our moral obligations in the two situations are different on account of our physical proximity to the drowning child, and our relative distance from the starving one on the other side of the world. One way Singer’s critics have attempted to cast doubt on the moral equivalence Singer draws between these scenarios is by defending the ethical validity of our moral intuition that “distance matters.” Slote’s (2009) attempted defense along these lines appears to affirm, in rough and general terms, the Smithian view:

In the familiar drowning examples, someone’s danger or plight has a salience, conspicuousness, vividness, and immediacy [Slote’s italics]…that engages normal human empathy (and consequently arouses sympathy and concern) in a way that similar dangers we merely know about [Slote’s italics] do not. So if morality is a matter of empathy-based concern or caring for/about people, we can not only explain why a failure to help in the drowning case seems worse to us than a failure to give to famine relief, but also justify that ordinary moral intuition (149).

The key point, for our purposes, is that while there is a lot at stake in this perennial debate over the ethical status of oikeiosis, participants on both sides of the debate share a belief in the

empirical fact that oikeiosis describes the way humans intuitively conceive their affective ties

and obligations. Indeed, it is precisely the empirical tendency for the strength of these affective ties to decay with distance that lends urgency and meaning to ethical debates about whether the

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moral intuitions that justify this tendency are in fact valid.6 _{Ultimately, this widespread belief in}

the empirical existence of oikeiosis7, together with our own awareness of our pre-reflective intuitions about the moral significance of spatial distance in regulating our obligations to others (there are very few of us, I think, that find Singer’s analogy intuitive or self-evident, and this is probably because we implicitly subscribe to the spatial view of ethical obligation that underpins

oikeiosis) should be seen as powerful testimonials for the view that the affective ties of human

beings are in fact spatially ordered.

Moreover, there is also suggestive evidence for such a view in the psychological

literature. For instance, Woltin et al (2011) argue that “empathic concern…consists of ‘zooming in’ on concrete other-oriented feelings of warmth and compassion”, and find experimental

evidence for the view that “empathic concern should be facilitated when people engage in a more detailed and concrete form of processing” (419). When this argument and finding is situated in the context of construal level theory—a prominent theory within social psychology that posits that events or individuals are conceived in more concrete (and less abstract) terms as our spatial proximity to them increases (Trope, Liberman, and Wakslak 2007) — it suggests that other- directed concern decays as a function of distance (since the concreteness of our mental representations declines with distance). In his study of empathy, Hoffman (2010) also

underscores the “difference that perceptual immediacy tends to make to the strength of empathic responses” (Slote 2009, 150; Hoffman 2001, 197).8

6 _{If, for instance, Singer did not believe in the empirical existence of these moral intuitions, there would}

be no reason to convince people that these intuitions are an unreliable guide to our ethical commitments

7 _{Not just in the Western philosophical tradition either; many have pointed out that Confucian ethical}

thought can be interpreted in terms of the “concentric circles” model of oikeiosis as well (Ivanhoe 2014, 26).

8

For a consideration of how sympathetic responses to others might shape the politics of trade, see Naoi and Kume (2011) (though empirically, they find more support for a “projection” based account of agricultural protectionism).

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In light of this discussion, we could plausibly ground “local-tropic” preferences in the empirical fact of oikeiosis, or the psychological tendency for the strength of our affective ties to decline with distance (Forman 2010, 5). On this account, individuals care about the well-being of the locales in which they live out their everyday lives because they associate the “prosperity and safety” of these locales with the “prosperity and safety” of their fellow residents (Forman 2010, 24), whom they disproportionately care about because spatial proximity (all else equal) amplifies the strength of individuals’ affective ties. For the sake of clarity, the steps of the argument can be presented as follows:

1. Affective connections weaken with physical distance (the empirical fact of oikeiosis). 2. The well-being of the “spatially proximate” individuals with whom one shares a locale is

tied to the realization of the local interest. In other words, the “prosperity and safety” of the individuals with whom one shares strong bonds of fellow-feeling (on account of their physical proximity) is tied to the creation of a flourishing economic and social

environment within the shared locale.

3. As a result, individual preferences are independently shaped by a desire to promote the economic interests of the locale (i.e. individuals are “local-tropic”)

In short, individual preferences over public policy and economic issues might be independently rooted in a concern with local interests because individuals disproportionately care about their fellow residents (on account of their physical proximity), and view their well- being as being tied to the collective prosperity of the locale.

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An appeal to oikeiosis is not necessarily the only way to ground an individual concern with the local interest, and motivate the existence of local-tropic preferences. Oikeiosis is fundamentally about the spatial ordering of our affective ties to other people, and I have

suggested that the weakening of these affective ties as a function of distance offers one possible explanation for the importance of local interests in shaping individual preferences. However, it is also plausible that individuals form emotional attachments to places qua places that cannot simply be reduced to a concern with their inhabitants; these are distinctive locale-specific emotional attachments that may encompass (and reinforce) neighborly attachments, but which are ultimately broader than these interpersonal affective ties. As Agnew (1987) notes, “places” are constituted not only by their physical locations (which encompass their unique natural and built environments), and the social and economic relations that are carried out within these locations, but also by the ways in which these various elements converge to evoke a distinctive “sense of place” or “structure of feeling” within a particular locale. These “structures of feeling” essentially create an emotional bond between people and the places in which they live (Agnew 1987, 27; Agnew 1996, 133), and this emotional bond could be the wellspring of a deep-seated concern with local interests.

Admittedly, there is something uncomfortably amorphous about the idea of the “sense of place” for the social scientist, but at the same time, there is also something undeniably

“instinctive, visceral, and human” about the “attachment to place” (Long 2010, 165). The idea that humans are emotionally connected to locales through the “[webs] of meaning…that [we] ascribe to place” (166) is therefore perhaps better characterized not as amorphous, but as something so woven into the fabric of our emotional and psychological instincts that it is

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suggest that the attachment to place is a purely subjective experience, and that its exploration is therefore something perhaps best left to writers, poets, and artists. But it is crucial to note that the “sense of place” is not a purely subjective experience. As Tuan (2001), one of the most

prominent geographers studying the idea of the sense of place, notes:

Intimate experiences are difficult but not impossible to express. They may be personal and deeply felt, but they are not necessarily solipsistic or

eccentric…Within a human group experiences have sufficient overlap so that an individual’s attachments do not seem egregious and incomprehensible to his peers (Tuan 2001, 147; quoted in Long 2010, 154).

The “sense of place” is therefore also a shared social and cultural experience, one that emerges “through the discourse of its inhabitants” (Long 2010, 154). The subjective experience of a place felt by an individual is shared and communicated with others, and this process is repeated many times over within a locale; through this discursive process, the subjective experiences of individuals within a locale ultimately crystalize into a broader narrative that becomes an important source of place-specific identity. This narrative, in turn, affects the individual experience of place and feelings of place attachment; the individual experience of place is therefore not purely subjective, but the product of a socially and culturally constructed narrative of what it means to live somewhere.

Social scientists have shown that these narratives can be extraordinarily important for social and political outcomes; within political science, Cramer’s (2016) work on rural

consciousness is a prominent recent example. Nor is the narrative-driven “sense of place” and the resulting attachment to place a distinctively rural phenomenon; the ethnographic work of geographers suggests that it is just as important in urban locales, and that its importance may be increasing (rather than decreasing) in a globalized world (Long 2010; Massey 1994; Cramer 2016). What Long (2010) says of Austin, Texas, could therefore be said of urban locales more

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generally: “Through the discourse of its inhabitants, Austin becomes more than a locality on a map…Austin becomes a narrative” (154). And this narrative is the basis for an affective

“relationship between people and place” that underpins a concern for the locale, which in turn is the basis for a concern with local interests. In stylized form, the argument runs as follows:

1. Individuals develop and experience subjective emotional responses and feelings towards places (Agnew 1987, 5).

2. These feelings are discursively shared, and coalesce into a more general narrative about a locale’s distinctive identity, “sense of place”, or ethos.

3. This narrative feeds back into an individual’s personal experience of a locale’s “sense of place” (see Step 1), which becomes the source of emotional attachment to the locale. 4. This attachment to the locale leads to a concern with local well-being and local economic

interests (i.e. individuals are local-tropic).

In short, places are not simply assemblages of people; they are constituted by distinctive natural and built landscapes, and distinctive social and economic relations and practices. These elements meld together to create distinctive place-specific emotional attachments that arise from an individually experienced, but also discursively created, “sense of place” or locale-specific ethos. These emotional attachments, in turn, motivate individuals to concern themselves with the well-being of the locale, and pursue the realization of locale-specific interests.

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3.4.2 Defining the Local Interest: How Are Local-Tropic Judgments About the