Coogan, David. "Service Learning and Social Change: The Case for Materialist Rhetoric." College Composition and Communication 57 (2006): 667-693.
"The promise is not just to make good citizens but to enable student-citizens to write for social change" (667). Actual production of rhetoric is too often neglected in favor of analysis/consumption of rhetoric by ASL programs. Coogan argues in favor of a material rhetoric model where students produce actual texts: "not just a case for rhetorical activism in service learning but a case for rhetorical scholarship in the public sphere" (670).
His material model is one of ADVOCACY: discovery, analysis, production, assessment. This process starts with getting out into the local context, inquiring into context, analyzing material conditions, producting rhetoric and evaluating efficacy. Coogan describes project in Chicago Public Schools to illustrate this model.
Showing posts with label social change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social change. Show all posts
Monday, August 6, 2007
Coogan
Coogan, David. "Counterpublics in Public Housing: Reframing the Politics of Service Learning." College English 67 (2005): 461-482.
ASL, Coogan says, provides an opportunity to at once challenge perceptions of 'city' and 'other' when we frame ASL as "a jumping-off point for addressing community issues" (462). Reflection, yes, but action too--an examination of how the "private" (personal selves/individuals expressing themselves discursively) and "public" (civic spaces with all their material realities) ... "inform each other in the communities we wish to serve" (462). The discursive and material intersect in the realm of the "counterpublic"--where various agents construct oppositional posititons to convince "outsiders to think or behave differently about issues" (465).
Reframe politics of ASL such that we avoid 'personal growth' mode, which neglects materiality and social analysis and fosters "naive identification with the other" (476). Give students a space to engage in counter-public discourse, which is both rhetorical (tell stories, use language) and material (via argumentation about real issues and lived experiences). Use a "Christian love ethic that takes the invidiual (and individual development) as the primary unit of analysis" (480).
ASL, Coogan says, provides an opportunity to at once challenge perceptions of 'city' and 'other' when we frame ASL as "a jumping-off point for addressing community issues" (462). Reflection, yes, but action too--an examination of how the "private" (personal selves/individuals expressing themselves discursively) and "public" (civic spaces with all their material realities) ... "inform each other in the communities we wish to serve" (462). The discursive and material intersect in the realm of the "counterpublic"--where various agents construct oppositional posititons to convince "outsiders to think or behave differently about issues" (465).
Reframe politics of ASL such that we avoid 'personal growth' mode, which neglects materiality and social analysis and fosters "naive identification with the other" (476). Give students a space to engage in counter-public discourse, which is both rhetorical (tell stories, use language) and material (via argumentation about real issues and lived experiences). Use a "Christian love ethic that takes the invidiual (and individual development) as the primary unit of analysis" (480).
Monday, July 30, 2007
Grabill
Grabill, Jeffrey T. Community Literacy Programs and the Politics of Change. Albany: State U of New York P, 2001.
Grabill's book is primarily a theorizing of the concept of literacy (grounded in his work with a community lit agency in Georgia), so it's less useful to my project. But Grabill offers an interesting discussion of institutions and argues for a version of institutional change and institutional action that gives preferential option for the poor (borrowing Catholic social teaching heavily).
Literacy, Grabill says, only has meaning in the context of specific, local institutions. Moreso than an abstraction like 'literacy,' institutions "are written, and if they are written, they can be rewritten" (8). Hence, concrete social change happens at the level of the (concrete) institution. Civic engagement efforts need "a critical rhetoric." Grabill writes, "This rhetoric is a situated procedure committed to participatory decision making within communitities and institutions that gives preferential option to the least powerful" (64).
Such efforts should involve interventions in the ways communities and institutions intersect (88). Specifically, practitioners of civic engagement work (ASL, etc.) need to revise their notions of "community" away from a homogenizing project. The danger of the word 'community' is that it is singular and potentially monolithic. Instead, make a committment to "difference" and "to naming those differences that mark one as less powerful" (91). He goes on: "I want to suggest that the committment to others is a committment to collective action and difference. I see no other way" (91).
On preferential option: "The reasons for preferential treatment are rather simple in principle yet terribly complex in practice. Recall that the ethical and political justification of democratic processes depends on there being free and equal participation. Once we acknowledge that decision-making processes aren't free and equal--and they never are--then it is necessary to think carefully about how they can approach that ideal" (123). Preferential option, in other words, gives the culture a closer approximation to the "ideal" of justice. You admit inequality and take affirmative steps to achieve equality. So with ASL work, the agency gets preferential option--over university, faculty member, career, student, and student need. (150-151).
Grabill's book is primarily a theorizing of the concept of literacy (grounded in his work with a community lit agency in Georgia), so it's less useful to my project. But Grabill offers an interesting discussion of institutions and argues for a version of institutional change and institutional action that gives preferential option for the poor (borrowing Catholic social teaching heavily).
Literacy, Grabill says, only has meaning in the context of specific, local institutions. Moreso than an abstraction like 'literacy,' institutions "are written, and if they are written, they can be rewritten" (8). Hence, concrete social change happens at the level of the (concrete) institution. Civic engagement efforts need "a critical rhetoric." Grabill writes, "This rhetoric is a situated procedure committed to participatory decision making within communitities and institutions that gives preferential option to the least powerful" (64).
Such efforts should involve interventions in the ways communities and institutions intersect (88). Specifically, practitioners of civic engagement work (ASL, etc.) need to revise their notions of "community" away from a homogenizing project. The danger of the word 'community' is that it is singular and potentially monolithic. Instead, make a committment to "difference" and "to naming those differences that mark one as less powerful" (91). He goes on: "I want to suggest that the committment to others is a committment to collective action and difference. I see no other way" (91).
On preferential option: "The reasons for preferential treatment are rather simple in principle yet terribly complex in practice. Recall that the ethical and political justification of democratic processes depends on there being free and equal participation. Once we acknowledge that decision-making processes aren't free and equal--and they never are--then it is necessary to think carefully about how they can approach that ideal" (123). Preferential option, in other words, gives the culture a closer approximation to the "ideal" of justice. You admit inequality and take affirmative steps to achieve equality. So with ASL work, the agency gets preferential option--over university, faculty member, career, student, and student need. (150-151).
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