Technical Communication After the Social Justice Turn: Building Coalitions for Action

by Rebecca Walton, Kristen Moore, Natasha Jones

Overview

This book marks the social justice turn in technical and professional communication (TPC). Social justice often draws attention to structural oppression, but to enact social justice as technical communicators, first, we must be able to trace daily practice to the oppressive structures it professionalizes, codifies, and normalizes. Technical Communication After the Social Justice Turn moves readers from conceptual explorations of oppression and justice to a theoretical framework that allows for the concepts to be applied and implemented in a variety of practical contexts. It historicizes the recent social justice turn in TPC scholarship, models a social justice approach to building theories and heuristics, and presents scenarios that illustrate how to develop sustainable practices of activism and social justice. Its commitment to coalition building, inclusivity, and socially just practices of citation and activism will support scholars, teachers, and practitioners not only in understanding how the work of technical communication is often complicit in oppression but also in recognizing, revealing, rejecting, and replacing oppressive practices.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367188474
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	05/29/2019
Series:	ATTW Series in Technical and Professional Communication
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Dr. Rebecca Walton is an associate professor of technical communication and rhetoric at Utah State University, USA, and the editor of Technical Communication Quarterly. Her co-authored work has won multiple national awards, including the 2018 CCCC Best Article on Philosophy or Theory of Technical or Scientific Communication, the 2016 and 2017 Nell Ann Pickett Award, and the 2017 STC Distinguished Article Award.

Dr. Kristen R. Moore is an associate professor of technical communication in the Departments of Engineering Education and English at the University at Buffalo, USA. Her scholarship has been published in a range of technical communication journals and has been awarded CCCC Best Article on Philosophy or Theory of Technical or Scientific Communication in 2015 and 2018, the Nell Ann Pickett Award, and the Joenk Award.

Dr. Natasha N. Jones is an associate professor at Michigan State University, USA, and the Vice President for the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW). She has published in several journals and been recognized for her scholarship, including with the Nell Ann Pickett Award and a CCCC Technical and Scientific Communication Best Article Award in 2014 and 2018.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Series Introduction by Dr. Tharon W. Howard

Foreword by Dr. Miriam F. Williams

Prologue

Introduction

Section I: Laying the Conceptual Groundwork

Chapter 1: Oppression

Chapter 2: Justice

Section II: Rearticulating the 3Ps

Chapter 3: Positionality

Chapter 4: Privilege

Chapter 5: Power

Section III: Building Coalitions

Chapter 6: Coalitional Action

Chapter 7: Critiques and Responses

Afterword by Dr. Angela M. Haas

Editorial Reviews

"This book opens vital conversations and makes fascinating theoretical interventions into the 'social justice turn' in technical communication. Anyone in this field with more than a fleeting commitment to social justice must carefully consider Walton, Moore, and Jones’ insights on intersectionality, coalition, power, and privilege."

-Karma R. Chávez, University of Texas at Austin, USA

This book opens vital conversations and makes fascinating theoretical interventions into the "social justice turn" in technical communication. Anyone in this field with more than a fleeting commitment to social justice, must carefully consider Walton, Moore, and Jones’ insights on intersectionality, coalition, power, and privilege.

Karma R. Chávez, University of Texas at Austin, USA

Beyond galvanizing the field to more fully embrace the social justice turn, this book accessibly synthesizes, creatively extends, and powerfully demonstrates this turn, offering scholars, teachers, students, and practitioners a valuable sourcebook of concepts and theories, methodologies, examples, and heuristics. Like its authors, this book is fierce in insisting that we account for and collectively redress the ways that we are complicit in the positionality privilege, and power ("3Ps") that shape forms of oppression, while also being generous in the resources and encouragement it provides to do such work.

J. Blake Scott, University of Central Florida, USA

From the Publisher