Description:
Field Rhetoric explores how rhetorical scholarship can be enriched through ethnographic fieldwork, offering a compelling look at how persuasion operates in everyday life and ecological contexts. This interdisciplinary volume brings together diverse voices to examine rhetoric in action, making it an essential resource for scholars and students interested in the dynamic interplay between place, discourse, and engagement.
Review Quotes:
"Rhetoric, says Aristotle famously, is the art of "finding all the available means of persuasion." In contrast to poetics, rhetoric is characterized by its situatedness or entanglement in contexts constitutive of what is called polis. Taking as its starting point the idea that the study of rhetoric 'is both enriched and perplexed by being present, being there, in places where rhetoric does its work, ' Field Rhetoric collects 10 essays addressing various aspects central to the practice of rhetoric as a goal-oriented verbal art in situ. Divided into three parts--field methodologies, field ontologies, field interventions--these essays offer "related but varying visions, methods, and theoretical underpinnings for rhetorical fieldwork," displaying the possibility of a coherent research program capable of ranging over multiple issues essential to civic life. The volume provides an unblinking glimpse into what can rightly be described as a field study of live engagements in the living space of persuasion. Field Rhetoric belongs in the bookcase of anyone who believes in the power and importance of an ancient art as it is made to return to its original vocation, revived by contemporary methods and their distinctly modern, ecological point of view. Highly recommended." --CHOICE
"Rai and Druschke have brought together an outstanding group of scholars to address an important and increasing area of concern for rhetorical scholars: How may we incorporate field methods into our research to study a wider range of rhetorical practices? This volume will appeal to rhetoric faculty and graduate students in both communication and English, as well as scholars in related disciplines who may be interested in a rhetorical approach to studying culture and society." --Robert Asen, author of Democracy, Deliberation, and Education