[h/t Joshua Garoon] This op-ed by Thomas Edsall here at the NYT about the relationship between group partisanship and ideology reminds me of arguments in theories of religion going back to Marx-Durkheim and Weber that touch upon contemporary affect studies. Do social structure and identity determine ideology and ideas or do ideology and ideas determine social structure and identity? Which comes first? Capitalism or Protestantism?  Which conditions which? Mind or matter? Which is primary and which is secondary and how do they invert, one in the face of the other? While we might say they are intertwined, there is something of a live wire question as we continue to suss out this mobius strip.  Of great helpfulness are the many political scientists cited in the op-ed, and the attention to what many of them are now bringing to affect and politics, and to the distinction drawn between “affective partisanship” and “ideological partisanship.”