A Zero-Sum Politics of Identification: A Topological Analysis of Wildlife Advocacy Rhetoric in the Mexican Gray Wolf Reintroduction Project

Autor/in	Walsh, Lynda
Titel	A Zero-Sum Politics of Identification: A Topological Analysis of Wildlife Advocacy Rhetoric in the Mexican Gray Wolf Reintroduction Project
Quelle	In: Written Communication, 36 (2019) 3, S.437-465 (29 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0741-0883
DOI	10.1177/0741088319842566
Schlagwörter	Wildlife; Advocacy; Climate; Change; Natural Resources; Rhetoric; Consciousness Raising; Urban Areas; Rural Areas; Program Descriptions; Electronic Publishing; Information Technology; Mass Media; Comparative Analysis; Attitudes; Political Influences; Alienation; Political Attitudes; Vignettes; Identification (Psychology); Computer Mediated Communication; Agricultural Occupations; Animal Husbandry; Conflict; Administrator Attitudes; Topology; Land Use; Ownership; Arizona; New Mexico + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Sozialanwaltschaft; Klima; Wandel; Natural Ressource; Natürliche Ressource; Rhetorik; Bewusstseinsbildung; Urban area; Stadtregion; Rural area; Ländlicher Raum; Elektronisches Publizieren; Informationstechnologie; Massenmedien; Attitude; Einstellung; Verhalten; Political influence; Politischer Einfluss; Entfremdung; Political attitude; Politische Einstellung; Computerkonferenz; Agriculture; Occupation; Landwirtschaft; Beruf; Landwirtschaftlicher Beruf; Tierhaltung; Konflikt; Topologie; Bodennutzung; Eigentum
Abstract	As climate change contracts our environment, bringing human and nonhuman communities into increased contact and conflict over scarce resources, advocacy rhetoric is making a related shift, from raising human awareness of problems "out there" to renegotiating the very boundaries between human and nonhuman communities. This shift--along with the advent of online media, which similarly blurs traditional urban versus rural boundaries between communities--invites us to update classic studies of advocacy rhetoric from the 1990s and early 2000s. Accordingly, this study addresses advocates' use of online media in the Mexican Gray Wolf Reintroduction Project. I reconstruct wildlife advocates' attitudes toward the Project, as expressed online in press releases and blog posts, by using a combination of topology--a method that looks at patterns of "topoi" (shared beliefs, values, and norms) that a community expresses in a given rhetorical situation--and Kenneth Burke's theories of attitudes and identification. I then compare advocates' attitudes with the attitudes of project administrators and landowners in the reintroduction area, reconstructed in earlier work. I conclude that advocates amplify their identification with allies (chiefly wolves and supportive sectors of "the public") and their alienation from competitors (chiefly public-land ranchers and project administrators) via the creation of "straw attitudes" for these communities that conflict both with their own attitude and with the documented attitudes of these communities. This rhetorical strategy creates a zero-sum political scenario for communication in the Project and recapitulates old political divisions in the southwestern United States. I finish by recommending rhetorical strategies aimed to increase identification, rather than alienation, in the Project and by showing what online advocacy rhetoric can teach us about the structure of Burkean theories of identification. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2020/1/01