1st Edition
The Rhetoric of Social Movements Networks, Power, and New Media
This collection provides an accessible yet rigorous survey of the rhetorical study of historical and contemporary social movements and promotes the study of relations between strategy, symbolic action, and social assemblage.
Offering a comprehensive collection of the latest research in the field, The Rhetoric of Social Movements: Networks, Power, and New Media suggests a framework for the study of social movements grounded in a methodology of "slow inquiry" and the interconnectedness of these imminent phenomena. Chapters address the rhetorical tactics that social movements use to gain attention and challenge power; the centrality of traditional and new media in social movements; the operations of power in movement organization, leadership, and local and global networking; and emerging contents and environments for social movements in the twenty-first century. Each chapter is framed by case studies (drawn from movements across the world, ranging from Black Lives Matter and Occupy to Greek anarchism and indigenous land protests) that ground conceptual characteristics of social movements in their continuously unfolding reality, furnishing readers with both practical and theoretical insights.
The Rhetoric of Social Movements will be of interest to scholars and advanced students of rhetoric, communication, media studies, cultural studies, social protest and activism, and political science.
1 From Cosmopolis to Cosmopolitics: The Rhetorical Study of Social Movements
Nathan Crick
Section 1: Tactics of Rhetorical Advocacy
2 The Assembling of a March: Rhetorics of the Farm Workers’ 1966 Pilgrimage
José G. Izaguirre III and Josue David Cisneros
3 Spatial Activism: The Democratization of Unruly Spaces
Joshua D Atkinson
4 Video-Activism and Small-Scale Resistance: The Visual Rhetoric of Youtube Videos by the Greek Anarchist Group Rouvikonas
Anastasia Veneti and Stamatis Poulakidakos
5 Strategic Storytelling: "Our Home" Narratives of Occupy Homes
Amy Pason
6 Confrontational and Intersectional Rhetoric: Black Lives Matter and the Shutdown of the Hernando De Soto (I-40) Bridge
Andre E. Johnson
7 Intersectional Revisionist History: The Rhetoric of Ecuadorian Communist Feminist Nela Martínez Espinosa
Diana Isabel Martínez
Section 2: Mobilizing New Media
8 Memes in Social Movement 2.0: #JeffCoSchoolBoardHistory and the Ouster of Conservative Education "Reformers" in Colorado
Christina R. Foust, PhD and Craig Weathers, MA
9 Affective Winds, De-Centered Knots of World-Making, and Tracing Force: Thinking Activism in Chinese Protests
Elizabeth Brunner and Kevin M. DeLuca
10 Social Movements, Media, and Discourse: Using Social Media to Challenge Racist Policing Practices and Mainstream Media Representations
Roslyn M. Satchel and Nicole Veronica Bush
11 Fan-Based Social Movements: The Harry Potter Alliance and the Future of Online Activism
Ashley Hinck
Section 3: Power in Networks
12 Performing Embodied Collectivity: Organizing LGBTQ Activists at Camp Courage
Erin J. Rand
13 The Significance of the Radical Flank: The Role of GetEQUAL in the Marriage Equality Movement
Dana Cloud
14 Analogical Arguments: Bridging Trans Social Movements and the Civil Rights Movement
Jessica A. Kurr and Isaac West
15 Voice Infrastructures and Alternative Imaginaries: Indigenous Social Movements Against Neocolonial Extraction
Mohan J. Dutta and Ngā Hau
Section 4: Emerging Contexts
16 Viral Mythologies: The Movement to Decriminalize HIV
Jeffrey Bennett
17 Motherhood & Environmental Justice: Women’s Environmental Communication, Maternity, and the Water Crisis in Flint, Michigan
Christopher Scott Thomas
18 Food Justice Advocacy Tours: Remapping Rooted, Regenerative Relationships through Denver’s "Planting Just Seeds"
Constance Gordon, Phaedra C. Pezzullo, and Michelle Gabrieloff-Parish
Biography
Nathan Crick is Professor of Communication at Texas A&M University. His publications include Dewey for a New Age of Fascism: Teaching Democratic Habits (2019), The Keys of Power: The Rhetoric and Politics of Transcendentalism (2017), Rhetorical Public Speaking: Civic Engagement in the Digital Age, 3rd edition (2019), Rhetoric and Power: The Drama of Classical Greece (2015), and Democracy and Rhetoric: John Dewey on the Arts of Becoming (2010).
"If you hadn’t noticed, social protest is surging, times ripe and desperate for reinvigorated scholarship and teaching concerning the rhetoric of social movements. Nathan Crick has assembled a superb cast of rhetorical theorists and critics, many activists themselves, to reconsider the history of social movement scholarship in rhetorical studies and, through a variety of engaging case studies, explore its theory and praxis on the streets, now and into imagined futures. This excellent volume underscores that rhetoric and social movements, in every sense, matter." – Charles E. Morris III, Professor and Chair of Communication and Rhetorical Studies, Syracuse University
"Premised in assumptions and goals that both locate the rhetorical study of social movements in its disciplinary roots and take such scholarship in critical new direction, this collection is a critical addition to anyone interested in movement, protest, advocacy, or networks. Together, the generative case studies take readers across a range of local, regional, national, and international movements, or events, prompting a pause on the concept of movement and mandating a scholarly project that intervenes in critical social and political moments." – Lisa A. Flores, Associate Professor, University of Colorado
