What Democracy Looks Like: The Rhetoric of Social Movements and Counterpublics
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What Democracy Looks Like: The Rhetoric of Social Movements and Counterpublics
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Overview
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.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780817391188 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Alabama Press |
| Publication date: | 05/16/2017 |
| Series: | Rhetoric, Culture, and Social Critique |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 320 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
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.
Read an Excerpt
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 PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8173-5893-8
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 is a distinct reluctance to privilege rhetoric in its guise as a constitutive force impacting one's sense of social events. It is true that, ostensibly, a social movement somehow comes into being, and once identifiable as such ("movements select from a repertoire of possibilities"), a critic can engage in an understanding of how the rhetoric unfolds. Keep in mind that, from Simons's perspective, it is the movement that selects what rhetorical action might be advanced on behalf of a cause. It is the case that the key term for Simons is "agent" — "what movement actors (and the forces they oppose) say and do to make a difference in the world." However, the agent is an effect of the organization of which s/he is a part, and the emphasis is on the relationship between what the agent does on behalf of the organization and what impact the rhetorical action has on the audience it engages.
Thus, Simons's RPS (Requirements, Problems, Strategies) strategy to label and analyze movements becomes part of the functionalist approach. However, the primary weakness of the highly structured approach lies in its inadequacy in analyzing social protests that remain impervious to the demands a functionalist approach makes on what a "successful" social movement should be and do. The trap that exists in following a formulaic or cookie-cutter approach is that it precludes the possibility of engaging rhetoric in terms outside the formula. If Simons's perspective were styled as "here's a way of thinking in broad terms," without presuming that one actually writes with a tripartite organizational structure as the governing model, it might be a more acceptable gloss on how one might approach analysis. As is, DeLuca is correct in noting that Simons's view of social movement rhetoric is organizational or managerial to a fault.
Simons was not the only one writing about movements at this time; other scholars also offered their own perspective on social movement analysis. McGee dismisses all of the alternative perspectives in arguing that "social movement" was a chimera, and that the focus should be on the creation of meaning between people. A sense of the conversation that ensued might best be represented by Simons's observation that, among the reasons for rejecting McGee was that he "offers questionable charges, innuendos, and fallacious arguments." Gronbeck provides a clear sense of the division between Simons's position and that advanced by McGee: "Simons (1970) had urged that movement leaders had to manage the physical resources available to the group to succeed; McGee said, no, what must be managed are beliefs, attitudes, values, and especially self-identities." This neatly categorizes the split between a functionalist and meaning-centered orientation: a critic approaches movements as real things or focuses attention on the people and their expression. My rereading of this debate leaves me with the uneasy sense that McGee was simply misunderstood. That may be too simple a claim, but I want to start with this thought as a beginning observation.
By unpacking McGee's argument, we can better understand the criticism it engendered. McGee begins with the assertion that "social movement is a set of meanings and not a phenomenon." McGee also notes Simons's usage of social movement is "an almost organic presence" in referring continually to features as "their ... their ... they ... them ... animate them." In arguing "(they) are not phenomena as a matter of fact," McGee is taking a precisely contrary position. In his view, the term "movement" "is an interpretation of phenomenal data controlled less by what happens in the real world than by what a particular user ... wants to see in the real world." Another key statement advances this same perspective: "The whole notion of 'movement' is mythical, a trick of the mind which must be understood as an illusion and not as a fact." McGee's earlier argument on the fictional status of "the people" further exemplifies his position on social movements: "The people" do not exist in real time until called into being by a rhetoric that constructs their momentary existence — even here, the particularity of "the people" is illusory — a photo of a mass rally depicts a slice of "the people" but by no means captures the entirety of those who find a particular discourse or event resonates with their own personal comfort or discomfort.
The distinction that follows from these recollections is to constitute an analysis of the rhetoric of "movement" rather than a study of the rhetoric in a "movement" as a viable enterprise. Chávez explains McGee's distinction thusly: "When social movements is used as a noun, it suggests that a movement is a phenomenon. Using social movement in its verb form ... reduces the possibility of limiting social movement studies to the investigation of things." Another way of construing the distinction is to recall bell hooks's references to "women's movement" rather than to the women's movement. While she is writing within the historical milieu that was/is considered a social movement, she seldom references it as a "thing." Restating McGee's main premise: Movements do not act. You will not see "the movement" walking down the street sipping a drink and waving a sign in protest. Rather, you will see a person or persons acting. Your description of their action is the meaning.
Before going further, it may be useful to briefly consider the objections to McGee as a means of shoring up a claim that his position was misunderstood. Lucas took the position that "serious flaws" in McGee's critique culminated in an "oversimplified" approach. In rejecting McGee's distinction between phenomena and meaning, Lucas argues that social movements are "no different from most other phenomena." If you accept his rejection of the distinction, this follows; but unless you accept the fact that McGee is not talking about the movement or phenomena you miss the point entirely.
Cathcart's position is closer to McGee's in noting that "social movements are a special type of collective behavior characterized by a unique rhetorical form"; consequently, we should "focus our movement studies on ... languaging strategies." McGee agrees with the focus on language but rejects the sense that there is a "unique rhetorical form" that constitutes "collective behavior" as a social movement. This returns the emphasis to understanding the meaning of "movement" as "an ideological state and rhetoric as constitutive or representative of that state." To name a rhetorical event is, to use Burke, to take an attitude toward the nature of the event, whether it is social movement or some other change.
What I have attempted to isolate above delineates what is at stake in focusing attention on the movement as opposed to focusing attention on social movement. The binary itself is a "convenient fiction" in that it promotes seeing phenomena and meaning as mutually exclusive orientations; in practice, the critic may focus on both, with either orientation as the primary. There is a cost to this "both/and" approach, as it contravenes McGee's original argument that the functional orientation was incapable of responding to the critical question of "meaning." Foust argues "to take McGee's challenge seriously, one would have to relinquish the assumption that movements are built by rational actors or effective persuaders — but one would also have to relinquish the ability to attribute 'constitutive communication' to a coherent, collective agent." As a critical rhetorician, that move is not as difficult as it may seem; it recognizes that an agent, qua agent, is not the author of her own words — but rather her words reflect a conversation within which she is immersed. In particular, in taking the approach inspired by McGee, one must abandon Simons's tripartite approach to social movement analysis if one's goal is to understand the relationship between rhetoric and movement.
This is not to say that McGee's position destroys the possibility of understanding the history of a movement; it is to say that both can exist as strategies, while noting that the questions they answer belong to different orders. McGee's orientation does not preclude an analysis of the dialectical tension between the opposition and those in power, should that be a determining focus that captures the discourse. Nor does it necessarily preclude a "Simonesque" functional analysis, if the primary purpose is to ground the analysis in a specific historical context and analyze what the rhetorical and organizational constraints are, either from the perspective of those focused on change, or from those resisting the call for action. Furthermore, one might focus on "meaning" as the primary aim, from McGee's perspective, while taking into account the manner in which the organizational structure inhibits or permits particular meanings. A pluralist approach allows both perspectives, granted viability as aims with different goals, to coexist within the critic's repertoire.
With this in mind, one should not be confused about what one is doing with either analysis. This may have been McGee's fundamental objection — a formulaic "inception-agitation-demise" orientation to the movement of ideas may not always be helpful in unpacking symbolic meaning. It may underscore who did what when, but does not, in itself, force a focus on issues of power difference, on the potential for symbolic change that culminates in a new power configuration or, in Foucault's terms, on the creation of a new game of truth.
In transitioning to a review of contemporary approaches, I want to make certain my position is clear. Just as Hauser and McClellan suggest their purpose was not to dismiss leader-centered movements while encouraging a focus on the role of vernacular rhetoric in protest actions, my purpose is not to dismiss a structural/functionalist approach. Rather it is to suggest that a sole reliance on this perspective limits the possibility of enjoining a rhetorical orientation toward meaning: what a social movement does in contrast to what it is.
Contemporary Approaches: Implications for Social Movement Analysis
A question that emerges from the foregoing historical review is "how does the above review of our past history and the argument for a pluralist approach play out in contemporary approaches to social movements?" In responding to this question, it is useful to contextualize current social movement research more broadly, especially in relation to resource mobilization (RM) and new social movement (NSM) research, largely conducted outside our discipline. This research provides a frame for approaching critical components such as identity, collectivity, and instrumentality in relation to our own analysis of social change. Scholars, primarily from sociology, have approached social movements from an RM perspective in the United States and from an NSM perspective in Europe. It can be argued that both traditions privilege a functional perspective in analyzing the nature of collective protest action. In particular, identity and collectivity are concepts around which analysis often revolves in both arenas. While NSM research is not confined a singular approach, there is merit in seeing within NSM research a set of common assumptions that generate a sense of sameness across analyses. Barker and Dale provide this argument in advancing several challenges to the distinctions assumed to exist between "new and old social movements," including such questions as to whether NSMs are really "new." In particular, functionalist NSM scholarship provides further illustrations of the utility in adopting alternative approaches in the analysis of contemporary movements. There are occasions where the functionalist approach is not as useful in analyzing movements that do not answer well to structural or resource demands. The following discussion focuses attention on the limits of utilizing identity and/or collectivity as the primary themes in social movement analysis. In moving beyond these limitations, I argue for what I term a "new instrumentality" that demands alternative approaches, especially in relation to reclaiming the utility of a meaning-centered orientation.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from What Democracy Looks Like by Christina R. Foust, Amy Pason, Kate Zittlow Rogness. Copyright © 2017 University of Alabama Press. Excerpted by permission of The University of Alabama Press.
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