Janie M. Harden Fritz
Communication Ethics and Crisis by
This collection of essays extends the conversation on communication ethics and crisis communication to offer practical wisdom for meeting the challenges of a complex and ever-changing world. In multiple contexts ranging from the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and family to the political and public, moments of crisis call us to respond from within particular standpoints that shape our understanding and our response to crisis as we grapple with contested notions of "the good" in our shared life together. With no agreed-upon set of absolutes to guide us, this moment calls us to learn from difference as we seek resources to continue the human conversation as we engage the unexpected. This collection of essays invites multiple epistemological and methodological standpoints to consider alternative ways of thinking about communication ethics and crisis.
Communication Ethics Literacy by
Communication Ethics Literacy offers a learning model of communication ethics literacy from a dialogic perspective, framing communication ethics as arising from a good or set of goods found within particular narratives, traditions, or virtue structures that guide human life. Offers examples and references from a variety of communication contexts, such as interpersonal, intercultural, and organizational, and subcontexts, such as family and health
Problematic Relationships in the Workplace by
Understanding and minimizing problematic relationships in the workplace are goals shared by those who work in and lead organizations as well as those who study organizations. This volume explores troublesome behaviors and patterns that shape relationships (e.g., hostility, bullying, incivility, and ostracism), presents insights gained from in-depth work on contexts and frameworks (e.g., telework, bureaucracies, cultural dimensions, and tokenism from a feminist perspective), and addresses the potential to restore these relationships to greater wellbeing (e.g., resilience, positive communication, civility, and forgiveness). Written by leading experts on problematic relationships in the workplace, this volume combines scholarship with applications that will be valuable in any organization. The new contributions in this second volume of Problematic Relationships in the Workplace extend the first volume's work by exploring cutting-edge and emerging issues in the field.
Problematic Relationships in the Workplace by
This seminal work on relationships in the workplace explores how problematic workplace relationships are conceptualized, the ways in which they impact people, and explores the recommended approaches to increasing health and wellness in organizations. Scholars from rhetorical, social scientific, constructivist, and critical perspectives offer a rich array of analyses and original studies of value to other scholars, advanced students, and practitioners.
Professional Civility by
Winner of the Everett Lee Hunt Award 2014. Winner of the NCA Clifford G. Christians Ethics Research Award 2013 from the Carl Couch Center for Social and Internet Research The crisis of incivility plaguing today’s workplace calls for an approach to communication that restores respect and integrity to interpersonal encounters in organizational life. Professional civility is a communicative virtue that protects and promotes productivity, one’s place of employment, and persons with whom we carry out our tasks in the workplace. Drawn from the history of professions as dignified occupations providing valuable contributions to the human community, an understanding of civility as communicative virtue, and MacIntyre’s treatment of practices, professional civility supports the #65533;practice#65533; of professions in contemporary organizations. A communicative ethic of professional civility requires attentiveness to the task at hand, support of an organization’s mission, and appropriate relationships with others in the workplace. Professional civility fosters communicative habits of the heart that extend beyond the walls of the workplace, encouraging a return to the service ethic that remains an enduring legacy of the professions in the United States.
Erik A. Garrett
Why Do We Go to the Zoo? by
Despite hundreds of millions of visitors each year, zoos have remained outside of the realm of philosophical analysis. This lack of theoretical examination is interesting considering the paradoxical position within which a zoo is situated, being a space of animal confinement as well as a site that provides valuable tools for species conservation, public education, and entertainment. Why Do We Go to the Zoo? argues that the zoo is a legitimate space of academic inquiry. The modes of communication taking place at the zoo that keep drawing us back time and time again beg for a careful investigation. In this book, the meaning of the zoo as communicative space is explored. This book relies on the phenomenological method from Edmund Husserl and a rhetorical approach to examine the interaction between people and animals in the zoo space. Phenomenology, the philosophy of examining the engaged everyday lived experience, is a natural method to use in the project. Despite its rich history and tradition it is interesting that there are very few books explaining how to do phenomenology. Why Do We Go to the Zoo? provides a detailed account of how to actually conduct a phenomenological analysis. The author spent thousands of hours in zoos watching people and animals interact as well as talking with people both formally and informally. This book asks readers to bracket their preconceptions of what goes on in the zoo and, instead, to explore the meaning of powerful zoo experiences while reminding us of the troubled history of zoos."
Craig T. Maier
Communicating Catholicism by
Fr. Thomas Reese has observed that American Catholic dioceses are simultaneously mysterious and essential to the institutional health and vitality of American Catholicism. In recent years, as American Catholicism increasingly finds itself embroiled in scandal and conflict, this mysteriousness has given way to feelings of suspicion, frustration, and even contempt. How can American dioceses navigate this complex and often hostile social, cultural, and political environment? Several decades ago, J. Michael Sproule invited rhetorical and communication scholars to focus on institutions to increase our understanding of the profound role complex organizations play in contemporary life, assess the purpose and significance of communication in pursuit of their missions, and give a human face to the otherwise institutional voice of corporate suasion. Following Sproule, this book defines a new field called diocesan institutional rhetoric that strives to transform dioceses from structures characterized by closure and adversity into sites of hope-full, response-able, Spirit-led opportunity. Today, rhetorical and communication issues emerge everywhere in American Catholicism. Drawing together relevant literature in Catholic theology, philosophy of communication, and corporate communication scholarship as well as over twelve years experience working as a communication professional in a diocesan chancery this book helps diocesan leaders, scholars, and observers to think differently and more fruitfully about the future of American Catholic ecclesial leadership."
Kathleen Glenister Roberts
Alterity and Narrative by
Intertwines identity and culture to demonstrate how identity is negotiated over a given history.
The Limits of Cosmopolis by
This book is concerned with cosmopolitanism &; a privileged notion of world citizenship and whether or not a cosmopolitan position is conducive to human flourishing when its preoccupation is aesthetic. The Limits of Cosmopolis addresses the question of how human life is organized: Is it possible to be a citizen of the world? Is there a difference between avowing that identity for oneself and morally and ethically making a commitment to others? What are the implications for communication – for a real dialogue of cultures? Because the identity claim to cosmopolitanism brings particular challenges to intercultural dialogue, the author argues that alternative routes to transnational human rights to moral and ethical commitment and communication ; are crucial. This book is interested in those alternative routes, in a more just organization of human life. It considers the ways in which a #65533;cosmopolitan identity#65533; may exacerbate intercultural conflicts rather than alleviating them as well as exploring its implications for intercultural interactions.
Communication Ethics by
This volume occasions a dialogue between major authors in the field who engage in a conversation on cosmopolitanism and provinciality from a communication ethics perspective. There is no consensus on what constitutes communication ethics, cosmopolitanism, or provinciality: the task is more modest and diverse and began with contributors being asked what the bias of their work suggests or offers for understanding the theme Communication Ethics: Between Cosmopolitanism and Provinciality. Rather than responding authoritatively, each essay acknowledges the contributor's own work. This book offers no answers, but invites a conversation that is more akin to a beginning, a joining, an admission that there is more than #65533;me#65533;, #65533;us#65533;, or #65533;my kind#65533; of people, theory, or wisdom. The book will be an excellent resource for instructors and for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in communication.
Age of Anxiety: Meaning, Identity, and Politics in 21st-Century Film and Literature by
Age of Anxiety: Meaning, Identity, and Politics in 21st Century Film and Literature analyzes literature and films that speak to our age of anxiety resulting from the decline of narratives that provided individuals with a meaningful human life. The authors argue that the twentieth-century sought to free individuals from the constraints of authoritative cultural traditions and institutions, liberating the autonomous self. Yet this has given rise to anxiety rather than liberation. Instead of deriving one's sense of purpose from one's role and place within a community, the consumer has been deceived into thinking that their identity can be purchased through the meaning represented by the conspicuous consumption of a brand. The same phenomenon manifests itself in politics within recent populist revolts against globalist politics. In addition, the rapid pace of technological development is driving an unprecedented faith in the malleability of human beings, raises doubts as to what it means to be a person. Utilizing paradigms from the fields of Communication/Rhetoric and Political Philosophy the book shows how the self has been displaced from its natural habitat of the local community. The book traces the origins of modern anxiety as well as possible remedies. Considered in the book are such popular culture artifacts as Downton Abbey, WALL-E, Hacksaw Ridge, Westworld, and Lord of the Rings and zombie films.
The New Science of Communication by
"The medium is the message," and we now live in a "global village" -- much of Marshall McLuhan's significant contributions to communication theory has been reduced to these well-known aphorisms. And while these catchphrases do indeed capture certain aspects of his thought, a fuller understanding of his vision remains remarkably incomplete. In this study, Anthony M. Wachs engages in an unconventional -- and controversially orthodox -- reading of McLuhan's work on media and technology. McLuhan proposed four laws to be used in evaluating any medium: What is enhanced or intensified? What is rendered obsolete? What is retrieved that was previously obsolesced? What happens when pressed to an extreme? In order to help the reader gain a better grasp of the problems of the "electric age," Wachs details the connection between McLuhan's views on technology, media, and communications, and the classical arts of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. He proposes that these laws have been understudied, misunderstood, and underutilized, and that, while they are indeed grounded in ancient modes of understanding that Bacon and Vico referred to as the "new science," they are uniquely helpful in understanding our contemporary moment in time. The New Science of Communication offers an original contribution to scholarship on McLuhan and media ecology, as scholars interested in the interactions of media with human feeling, thought, and behavior have forced modern presuppositions onto their readings of McLuhan. Wachs, however, corrects this misreading by uniquely combining communication and media, and restoring classical and medieval communication theory as an alternative to modern rationalist theories. He argues that this restoration provides a way to think through the implications of living in our own electronic age in a more balanced way, reestablishing the importance of humanities-based education within the twenty-first century.
