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The purpose of Communicating in the Anthropocene: Intimate Relations is to tell a different story about the world. Humans, especially those raised in Western traditions, have long told stories about themselves as individual protagonists who act with varying degrees of free will against a background of mute supporting characters and inert landscapes. Humans can be either saviors or destroyers, but our actions are explained and judged again and again as emanating from the individual. And yet, as the coronavirus pandemic has made clear, humans are unavoidably interconnected not only with other humans, but with nonhuman and more-than-human others with whom we share space and time. Why do so many of us humans avoid, deny, or resist a view of the world where our lives are made possible, maybe even made richer, through connection? In this volume, we suggest a view of communication as intimacy. We use this concept as a provocation for thinking about how we humans are in an always-already state of being-in-relation with other humans, nonhumans, and the land.
Communicating the Climate Crisis puts communication at the center of the change we need, providing concrete strategies that help break the inertia that blocks social and cultural transformation. Reimagining “earth” not just as the ground we walk upon but as the atmosphere we breathe—Eairth—this book examines our consumption-based identities in fossil fuel culture and the necessity of structural change to address the climate crisis. Strategies for overcoming obstacles start with facing the emotional challenges and mental health tolls of the crisis that lead to climate silence. Breaking that silence through personal climate conversations elevates the importance of the problem, finds common ground, and eases “climate anxiety.” Climate justice and faith-based worldviews help articulate our moral responsibility to take drastic action to protect all humans and the living world. This book tells a new story of hope through action—not as isolated, “guilty” consumers but as social actors who engage hearts, hands, and minds to envision and create a desired future.
Communities and the Clean Energy Revolution: Public Health, Economics, Design, and Transformation is an engaging and interdisciplinary investigation into clean energy systems such as solar and wind power and the need to transform our energy system. Looking at the intersection of clean energy with community engagement, diversity, and economic development, it is a remarkably accessible account from the front lines of the clean energy revolution. Organized as a series of case studies set in eight locations, the author profiles people leading varied renewable energy projects from using solar to survive hurricanes to passing a Green New Deal bill for America’s largest city, the beginnings of th...
The first edition of the Encyclopedia of Cancer and Society was published in 2007 and received a 2008 Editors’ Choice Award from Booklist. It served as a general, non-technical resource focusing on cancer from the perspective of the social and behavioral sciences, exploring social and economic impacts, the "business" of cancer, advertising of drugs and treatment centers, how behavior change could offer great potential for cancer prevention, environmental risks, food additives and regulation, the relation between race and ethnicity and cancer risk, socioeconomic status, controversies—both scientific and political—in cancer treatment and research, country-by-country entries on cancer aro...
The #MeToo movement has catalyzed an international discussion about the routine challenges women face in their professional lives as a result of male-dominated industries and office cultures. These include well-documented cases of sexual harassment and assault, but also unequal opportunities, unequal pay, sexist stereotypes, and a devaluation of women's labor. While these are problems women face in all industries and at all levels, the political and technology sectors are particularly rife with them. Recoding the Boys' Club is a ground-breaking deep-dive into the work experiences of women in the political technology field in the United States. Political technology sits at the intersection of...
Fracking and the Rhetoric of Place investigates the rhetorical strategies of speakers at public hearings on hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in order to understand how places shape and are shaped by citizens as they engage in their democracy. As an important argumentative resource in environmental controversy, the rhetoric of place helps citizens situate themselves within local contexts and raise their voices in times of social conflict. Justin Mando uses rhetorical analysis, discourse analysis, and corpus analysis to offer scholars of place-based rhetoric and environmental communication a heuristic approach to studying their own sites. This approach reveals that place-based arguments a...
How do contemporary critical thinkers find a way to work between the doubt that grounds their thinking and the knowing needed to ground emancipatory political struggles? In this overview of four contemporary thinkers’—Timothy Morton, Peter Sloterdijk, Slavoj Žižek, and Bruno Latour—approaches to critique and climate change, communication scholar Murdoch Stephens discusses and analyses the fissures, elisions, and paradoxes that inform critical theory. This book delves into how critical theory offers important insights for those interested in climate change, but also how critical theory faces challenges to its constitution when faced with issues that are both urgent and yet require a scientific rigour that is not the specialty of critique. Written from the perspective of the interdisciplinary field of environmental communication, Critical Environmental Communication: How Does Critique Respond to the Urgency of Climate Change? argues for re-orienting the field towards the tensions and possibilities drawn from these four authors.
Hyperlocal Organizing: Collaborating for Recovery Over Time explores the difficult work of post-disaster recovery. Jack L. Harris, demonstrates that after disaster, broad interorganizational landscapes are needed to unite the grassroots, neighborhoods, communities, and institutions to solve problems of recovery and bring people home. Yet all too often, government disaster policy and institutions ignore the critical role of local knowledge and organizing. Exploring the organizational landscape of the mid-Atlantic United States after Hurricane Sandy, Harris reveals how participation and collaboration open multiple pathways to recovery after disaster by building resilience and democratizing gov...
Given the centrality of economics and communication in the Occupy movement, Understanding Occupy from Wall Street to Portland uses economic insights and contemporary theories of communication to better understand the movement at this current juncture in history. This collection is organized by complementary theoretical and methodological perspectives: the global—critical cultural and economic understandings of Occupy; the local—interpretive ethnographic examinations of a local site—Occupy Portland, Oregon; and mediated perspectives—analyses of the words of officials and media. The contributors also examine social movement phenomena by stepping outside of social movement theory to ana...