De/Re-stabilizing Rhetoric and Contemporary Social Movements

Session Submission Type: Paper Session

Abstract

This panel explores contemporary social movements, focusing on their use of web technologies, organizations, and communities in an effort to destabilize and reconfigure mainstream society's views on the environmentalism, racism, and consumerism. By exploring media organizations, environmental groups, and "culture jammers," this panel explores the future of social movements and the savvy rhetorical strategies of contemporary social movements that engage discourses of stability and change to reconfigure what it means to be social actors.

Sub Unit

• Rhetorical and Communication Theory Division

Chair

• Phaedra Pezzullo, Indiana University

Individual Presentations

• Environmental Activism on Multiple Terrains: The Case of China - Ye Sun, University of Texas, Austin; Kevin DeLuca, University of Georgia

• Boardroom Meetings and On-line Protests: Organizing an Asian American media activist community - Vincent Pham, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

• Cooking Up a Movement? 'Skinny Bitch' and the Neoliberal Logics of Post-Feminist Veganism - Cindy Spurlock, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Session Organizer

• Vincent Pham, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign