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.

The sit-ins of the American civil rights movement were extraordinary acts of dissent in an age marked by protest. By sitting in at "whites only" lunch counters, libraries, beaches, swimming pools, skating rinks, and churches, young African Americans and their allies put their lives on the line, fully aware that their actions would almost inevitably incite hateful, violent responses from entrenched and increasingly desperate white segregationists. And yet they did so in great numbers: most estimates suggest that in 1960 alone more than seventy thousand young people participated in sit-ins across the American South and more than three thousand were arrested. The simplicity and purity of the act of sitting in, coupled with the dignity and grace exhibited by participants, lent to the sit-in movement's sanctity and peaceful power. In Like Wildfire, editors Sean Patrick O'Rourke and Lesli K. Pace seek to clarify and analyze the power of civil rights sit-ins as rhetorical acts—persuasive campaigns designed to alter perceptions of apartheid social structures and to change the attitudes, laws, and policies that supported those structures. These cohesive essays from leading scholars offer a new appraisal of the origins, growth, and legacy of the sit-ins, which has gone largely ignored in scholarly literature. The authors examine different forms of sitting-in and the evolution of the rhetorical dynamics of sit-in protests, detailing the organizational strategies they employed and connecting them to later protests. By focusing on the persuasive power of demanding space, the contributors articulate the ways in which the protestors' battle for basic civil rights shaped social practices, laws, and the national dialogue. O'Rourke and Pace maintain that the legacies of the civil rights sit-ins have been many, complicated, and at times undervalued.

A compelling and timely collection that combines two distinct but related theories in rhetoric and communication studies

This compelling text is a careful examination of the rhetoric of dissent. The Rhetoric of Agitation and Control provides a framework for the study of agitation and responses to that agitation. The third edition offers a profile of past and current movements, such as the street theatre of Chicago in 1968 and the innovative and technological rhetorical techniques found in the "Battle in Seattle." The modus operandi of todays protests continues to evolve from that of the 1960s and 1970s. As smartphones and the Internet replace tie-dyed shirts and flower power, contemporary students and scholars alike will find this edition of The Rhetoric of Agitation and Control to be a helpful tool in studying the progression of social and protest movements.

From suffragettes to vegans, participants in social movements strive to change the worlds they inhabit, whether by direct action, rallies, marches, organized work stoppages, or engaging government power in service of their aims. Active Voices explores both the rhetorical dimensions of such activist activities and the integral role of rhetoric in the processes of social transformation. This collection balances in-depth analyses of particular movements and pedagogical projects with broader perspectives on how language and embodied action shape avenues for activism. Featured are a wide range of sites for social change, from the progressive education movement to African American drum circles, and from prisoner reentry programs to the nineteenth-century women's suffrage movement. Speaking as scholars, activists, storytellers, rhetoricians, and teachers, the contributors blur the boundaries between different aspects of their identities and challenge divisions between creating theory and practicing it.

The social, political, and legal struggles that made up the American civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century produced and refined a wide range of rhetorical strategies and tactics. Arguably the most astonishing and certainly the least understood are the sit-in protests that swept the nation at the beginning of the 1960s. A companion to Like Wildfire: The Rhetoric of the Civil Rights Sit-Ins, this concentrated collection of essays examines the origins and rhetorical methods of five distinct civil rights sit-ins of 1960. For students of rhetoric, protest, and sociopolitical movements, this volume demonstrates how we can read the sit-ins by using diverse rhetorical lenses as essentially persuasive conflicts in which participants invented and deployed arguments and actions in attempts to change segregated communities and the attitudes, traditions, and policies that maintained segregation.

Who changed Bob Marley’s famous peace-and-love anthem into “Come to Jamaica and feel all right?” When did the Rastafarian fighting white colonial power become the smiling Rastaman spreading beach towels for American tourists? Drawing on research in social movement theory and protest music, Reggae, Rastafari, and the Rhetoric of Social Control traces the history and rise of reggae and the story of how an island nation commandeered the music to fashion an image and entice tourists. Visitors to Jamaica are often unaware that reggae was a revolutionary music rooted in the suffering of Jamaica’s poor. Rastafarians were once a target of police harassment and public condemnation. Now the music is a marketing tool, and the Rastafarians are no longer a “violent counterculture” but an important symbol of Jamaica’s new cultural heritage. This book attempts to explain how the Jamaican establishment’s strategies of social control influenced the evolutionary direction of both the music and the Rastafarian movement. From 1959 to 1971, Jamaica’s popular music became identified with the Rastafarians, a social movement that gave voice to the country’s poor black communities. In response to this challenge, the Jamaican government banned politically controversial reggae songs from the airwaves and jailed or deported Rastafarian leaders. Yet when reggae became internationally popular in the 1970s, divisions among Rastafarians grew wider, spawning a number of pseudo-Rastafarians who embraced only the external symbolism of this worldwide religion. Exploiting this opportunity, Jamaica’s new Prime Minister, Michael Manley, brought Rastafarian political imagery and themes into the mainstream. Eventually, reggae and Rastafari evolved into Jamaica’s chief cultural commodities and tourist attractions.

In the nineteenth century the United States was ablaze with activism and reform: people of all races, creeds, classes, and genders engaged with diverse intellectual, social, and civic issues. This cutting-edge, revelatory book focuses on rhetoric that is overtly political and oriented to social reform. It not only contributes to our historical understanding of the period by covering a wide array of contexts--from letters, preaching, and speeches to labor organizing, protests, journalism, and theater by white and Black women, Indigenous people, and Chinese immigrants--but also relates conflicts over imperialism, colonialism, women's rights, temperance, and slavery to today's struggles over racial justice, sexual freedom, access to multimodal knowledge, and the unjust effects of sociopolitical hierarchies. The editors' introduction traces recent scholarship on activist rhetorics and the turn in rhetorical theory toward the work of marginalized voices calling for radical social change.

The SAGE Handbook of Rhetorical Studies surveys the latest advances in rhetorical scholarship, synthesizing theories and practices across major areas of study in the field and pointing the way for future studies. Edited by Andrea A. Lunsford and Associate Editors Kirt H. Wilson and Rosa A. Eberly, the Handbook aims to introduce a new generation of students to rhetorical study and provide a deeply informed and ready resource for scholars currently working in the field. Key Features: Brings together scholars from across the disciplines of Speech, Communication, English, and Writing Studies. While rhetoric is by definition interdisciplinary, self-identified scholars in the field are most often institutionally separated from one another. This Handbook bridges this divide by providing a refreshing range of transdisciplinary views on the nature, status, definition, and scope of rhetoric today. Offers a thorough-going overview of rhetorical studies today. Organized in four sections—Historical Studies in Rhetoric; Rhetoric Across the Disciplines; Rhetoric and Pedagogy, and Rhetoric and Public Discourse—the volume provides a single resource for engaging rhetorical studies. Underscores the importance of rhetoric to education across a wide range of disciplines as well as to effective participation in public arenas. Thus the volume connects rhetoric′s long teaching tradition to an activist agenda for informed civic engagement. Addresses methodological and theoretical difficulties and offers means of negotiating them. Provides one of the first introductions to rhetorical studies across cultures and to the related debates concerning comparative and contrastive rhetorics.