| Chapter : | Introduction |
building—whether the topic is climate change, environmental destruction, equal rights, worker treatment, immigration policy, race relations, or welfare reform. Given this motive, we considered SIU from a theoretical foundation that helped guide us to focus on key aspects of SIU that would help us better understand it and explain movement building. Our theoretical foundation consisted of three threads—rhetorical strategies, modes of organizing, and practices of citizenship—that together, we argue, are fundamental to movement building in the twenty-first century. Each of the chapters in this book draws on one or more of these threads.
We are not alone in examining movements through the lens of rhetorical strategies, modes of organizing, and the practices of citizenship. In particular, there are well-established academic traditions of examining social movement rhetoric and the organizational dynamics of movements. This book draws on these traditions in communication, sociology, and political science. Each chapter explains relevant theories and research in an accessible way, and then uses them to help make sense of SIU and movements. By highlighting these three threads, we are attempting to pay attention to phenomena that are particularly important to contemporary movements. To explain what these perspectives bring into focus, we briefly outline each piece of our foundation.
Rhetorical Strategies
A focus on rhetorical strategies in social movements is a concern with how the tactical use of words, symbols, and images contributes to efforts for social change (Morris and Browne 2006). Rhetorical tactics can be used instrumentally to achieve certain goals and can be constitutive of new ways of thinking, adhering, and acting in relation to climate change or other pressing social issues. Rhetorical theory can highlight inventive resources—materials for crafting new, compelling, jarring, or controversial messages and arguments—such as metaphors, values, condensation symbols, myths, and images that uniquely draw people together, agitate for change, or transform public opinion. This perspective offers