What Democracy Looks Like: The Rhetoric of Social Movements and Counterpublics (Rhetoric, Culture, and Social Critique) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0817358935 ISBN 13: 9780817358938

Verlag: The University of Alabama Press, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

What Democracy Looks Like is a compelling and timely collection which combines two distinct but related theories in rhetoric and communication studies, while also exploring theories and ideas espoused by those in sociology, political science, and cultural studies.

Recent protests around the world (such as the Arab Spring uprisings and Occupy Wall Street movements) have drawn renewed interest to the study of social change and, especially, to the manner in which words, images, events, and ideas associated with protestors can "move the social." What Democracy Looks Like is an attempt to foster a more coherent understanding of social change among scholars of rhetoric and communication studies by juxtaposing the ideas of social movements and counterpublics-historically two key factors significant in the study of social change. Foust, Pason, and Zittlow Rogness's volume compiles the voices of leading and new scholars who are contributing to the history, application, and new directions of these two concepts, all in conversation with a number of acts of resistance or social change.

The theories of social movements and counterpublics are related, but distinct. Social movement theories tend to be concerned with enacting policy and legislative changes. Scholars flying this flag have concentrated on the organization and language (for example, rallies and speeches) that are meant to enact social change. Counterpublic theory, on the other hand, focuses less on policy changes and more on the unequal distribution of power and resources among different protest groups, which is sometimes synonymous with subordinated identity groups such as race, gender, sexuality, and class.

Nonetheless, contributors argue that in recent years the distinctions between these two methods have become less evident. By putting the literatures of the two theories in conversation with one another, these scholars seek to promote and imagine social change outside the typical binaries.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Christina R. Foust is an associate professor and chair of communication studies at the University of Denver and is the author of Transgression as a Mode of Resistance.

Amy Pason is an assistant professor of communication studies at the University of Nevada, Reno. Her work has appeared in the International Journal of Communication and ephemera.

Kate Zittlow Rogness teaches at Hamline University. Her work has appeared in First Amendment Studies and the Western Journal of Communication.

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What Democracy Looks Like

The Rhetoric of Social Movements And Counterpublics

By Christina R. Foust, Amy Pason, Kate Zittlow Rogness

The University of Alabama Press

Copyright © 2017 University of Alabama Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8173-5893-8

Contents

Acknowledgments, 
Introduction: Rhetoric and the Study of Social Change Amy Pason, Christina R. Foust, and Kate Zittlow Rogness, 
I. Problematizing the Past of Social Movement Rhetoric and Counterpublic Research, 
1. Social Movement Scholarship: A Retrospective/Prospective Review Raymie E. McKerrow, 
2. "Social Movement Rhetoric": A Critical Genealogy, Post-1980 Christina R. Foust, 
3. Counterpublic Theory Goes Global: A Chronicle of a Concept's Emergences and Mobilities Daniel C. Brouwer and Marie-Louise Paulesc, 
II. Distinguishing and Performing Counterpublics and Movements through Case Studies, 
4. Phenomenon or Meaning? A Tale of Two Occupies Amy Pason, 
5. Pledge-a-Picketer, Power, Protest, and Publicity: Explaining Protest When the State/Establishment Is Not the Opposition Catherine Helen Palczewski and Kelsey Harr-Lagin, 
6. (Re)turning to the Private Sphere: SlutWalks' Public Negotiation of Privacy Kate Zittlow Rogness, 
7. Against Equality: Finding the Movement in Rhetorical Criticism of Social Movements Karma R. Chávez with Yasmin Nair and Ryan Conrad, 
III. New Directions For Studying Social Movements and Counterpublics Rhetorically, 
8. Latina/o Vernacular Discourse: Theorizing Performative Dimensions of an Other Counterpublic Bernadette Marie Calafell and Dawn Marie D. McIntosh, 
9. Activism in the Wake of the Events of China and Social Media: Abandoning the Domesticated Rituals of Democracy to Explore the Dangers of Wild Public Screens Kevin Michael DeLuca and Elizabeth Brunner, 
10. WikiLeaks and Its Production of the Common: An Exploration of Rhetorical Agency in the Neoliberal Era Catherine Chaput and Joshua S. Hanan, 
Selected Bibliography, 
Contributors, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Social Movement Scholarship

A Retrospective/Prospective Review

Raymie E. McKerrow

This collection aims to address the question about the connections and differences between social movement and counterpublic scholarship; more importantly it aims to understand what one critical approach yields that another does not. My goal in this essay is to provide a context for responding to the questions and ideas that current scholarship raises about the nature and direction of a functional versus a meaning-centered perspective on how best to understand and evaluate the success or failure of a movement to achieve social change. My purpose is to use prior history as a framework for a review of contemporary approaches. In particular, my concern is that we recognize that these are not either-or perspectives, as both have value. A functionalist perspective may incorporate a meaning-centered analysis, while a meaning-centered perspective may be most useful in those cases where a social movement or protest action does not fit within the confines of a functionalist orientation.

Framing Social Movement's Identity as Functionalist or Meaning-Centered

These contrary positions are represented in Simons's functional approach to social movements and what might be termed a minority "rhetorical movement" or meaning-centered position articulated by McGee in 1980 and again in 1983. Because Simons initiated the break from a modernist Aristotelian approach to analyzing protest rhetoric and established a major orientation toward social movement research, his perspective will serve as a "representative anecdote," standing in for similar orientations during the debate in the early 1980s. McGee's approach is the oppositional "representative anecdote" as it moves us from a positivist to a postmodern orientation grounded in the contingency of language in generating social change. Understanding the implications of what was treated as an oppositional divide is critical in assessing what might be gained in recognizing the respective strengths of both in contemporary scholarship.

Within a functionalist perspective, the focus is on a social movement as a unique thing; thus, studying movements lends itself to identifying their unique organizational and instrumental features. As such, it focuses on a movement's trajectory through time. It addresses the rhetorical goals of spokespersons in each stage (as if they were discrete) and predicts outcomes according to the movement's reputed success in managing the "constraints" within the limits of their abilities (to employ an equally positivist orientation recommended by Bitzer's sense of a "rhetorical situation"). What Simons/functionalists provide is a critical vocabulary — a grammar of sorts that allows the critic to "ticket and label" a social movement as one kind or another, with the presumption that in "labeling" one has said something. That something implies that a social movement by another name would not be the same, even though each could be analyzed in terms of the strategic response to the requirements and problems faced. Thinking about movements in this manner, with clearly specified goals, audiences, and organizational structure, allows functionalists to employ a variety of classificatory typologies. For example, in the movement typology (Reformist, Expressivist, etc.) Simons situates rhetoric as an instrumental activity within the structure of the organization's functional orientation: the movement acts (typically through or with rhetoric) and things happen. He provides very extensive and clear instructions for approaching movement analysis from the tripartite perspective of his 1970 orientation: The analysis of Requirements asks the analyst to figure out how the movement came into being and notes the role of the "leader" charged with multiple tasks. Problems relates to the structural impediments (e.g., internal bickering and lack of societal legitimacy). Strategies allows one to bifurcate those who agitate into militants and moderates, with specific predictable consequences of the rhetorical success, or lack thereof, by each in terms of audience receptivity.

From this formal perspective, "a social movement is an uninstitutionalized collectivity that operates on a sustained basis to exert external influence in behalf of a cause." While this seems an iron-clad definition with clear boundaries, Simons allows that "a collectivity may be partially institutionalized and still be a movement," thus showing a limit to understanding movements even in his own definition. He provides, as the prime examples of such a situation, the National Organization for Women and the National Rifle Association, as both are ostensibly mainstream organizations complicit with institutional norms. At the same time, they function outside themainstream to the extent that their respective agitation for feminist causes or antigun control belongs to the movement as an, in Simons's terms, uninstitutionalized collectivity.

Although Simons's main focus is on organizational forms, he connects to meaning making, whether counter to or in support of institutions, in noting that they "are engaged most fundamentally in struggles over meaning." While meaning is an important component in what is otherwise a highly functional, organizationally focused examination of who does what to whom under what social conditions, the link to "meaning" or rhetorical action is not a central focus in the analysis. There...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: The University of Alabama Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0817358935
• ISBN 13: 9780817358938
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 296
• Herausgeber: Foust Christina R., Pason Amy
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Mare Nostrum Group B.V.; gpsr@mare-nostrum.co.uk; ; Doelen 72; Breda; 4831 GR; Niederlande