Robert Asen

A discourse theory of citizenship

This essay calls for a reorientation in scholarly approaches to civic engagement from asking questions of what to asking questions of how. I advance a discourse theory of citizenship as a mode of public engagement. Attending to modalities of citizenship recognizes its fluid and quotidian enactment and considers action that is purposeful, potentially uncontrollable and unruly, multiple, and supportive of radical but achievable democratic practices. Citizenship engagement may be approached through potential foci of generativity, risk, commitment, creativity, and sociability. A discourse theory reformulates the relationship between citizenship and citizen, reveals differences in enactments of citizenship, and calls attention to hybrid cases of citizenship.

Toward a Normative Conception of Difference in Public Deliberation.

The historical and conceptual exclusions of the bourgeois public sphere have prompted theorists to consider alternative models. The three non-deliberative models examined in this article reinscribe...

Reflections on the Role of Rhetoric in Public Policy

This article situates public policy as a mediation of rhetorical and material forces. From this perspective, public policy draws on the constitutive and consequential power of rhetoric as well as other factors like institutional authority and financial resources. As a constellation of multifarious forces, public policy refigures the text as process, which raises issues of authorship, temporality, and polysemy differently than singular speech texts and other relatively discreet texts.

Ideology, Materiality, and Counterpublicity: William E. Simon and the Rise of a Conservative Counterintelligentsia

As a conceptual term, “counterpublic” serves scholarship best when contributing to a critical-theory project, which means that particular constellations of materiality and ideology may bolster some calls for counterpublicity while gainsaying others. This may be investigated by examining how a text upholds or betrays an advocates values, seeking out textual markers of access and influence that belie claims of marginalization, and assessing whether an advocates discourse implicitly or explicitly widens or narrows discursive space for others. From this perspective, although William Simon claimed that pro-business advocates had been excluded from public debates in his 1978 book A Time for Truth, he nevertheless asserted a commitment to negative liberty that discounted potentially conflicting values in a pluralistic society, evidenced strong financial and political connections as well as a patrician background and bearing, and restricted discursive space for others.

Research Evidence and School Board Deliberations Lessons From Three Wisconsin School Districts

This article analyzes the use of research evidence in school-board deliberations in three school districts in Wisconsin. In these settings, the circulation, meaning, and function of research depended importantly on the interests and backgrounds of advocates, the composition of audiences, and the values and contexts of decision-making. Board members and other meeting participants sought direct connections between research evidence and local district concerns. Their use of research gainsays linear models of policymaking, demonstrating that research carries different meanings in different situations and that research may not resolve value differences that inform policy disputes.

The Multiple Mr. Dewey: Multiple Publics and Permeable Borders in John Dewey's Theory of the Public Sphere

This essay explicates how John Deweys theory of the public sphere supports a conceptual model that recognizes multiple publics and permeable borders between “public” and “private.” As such, Deweys theory of the public sphere stands as an important antecedent and critical resource for contemporary theorizing. Dewey highlighted the role of communication in the formation and re-formation of publics, and he held an inclusive view of communication as an artful and fluid social process. However, Deweys view of communication is problematic to the extent to which he privileged face-to-face communication as the primary force that forms local communities.

“The Research Says”: Definitions and Uses of a Key Policy Term in Federal Law and Local School Board Deliberations

Focusing on research as a key term in debates over U.S. education policy, this article compares the definition of research in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) with the meanings and uses of research in school board deliberations in three local districts in Wisconsin. While NCLB articulates a narrow view of research and a hierarchy of methods, the school boards operated with an expansive meaning of research and combined its use with other evidence types. Appreciating the role that values play in crafting public policy, these local debates balanced technical and public modes of reasoning.

Introduction: Rhetoric and Public Policy

Some readers of this journal may wonder why a special issue, which ostensibly assembles a critical mass of articles focused on an unusual or underappreciated topic, has been devoted to rhetoric and public policy. Aft er all, one may ask, haven’t scholars understood for over two millennia that rhetoric and public policy are intertwined? Classical figures like Aristotle recognized this connection and wrote about it extensively. His discussion of deliberative rhetoric, for example, off ered advice for advocates debating such issues as war, and he instructed citizens that “the security of the state” depended on their being “knowledgeable about legislation.”1 In our own time, on the pages of this journal, studies regularly appear exploring intersections of rhetoric and public policy across a wide range of historical and contemporary topics. A special issue on rhetoric and public policy, then, cannot blithely announce that a heretofore unseen connection has been discovered and that the articles shall inaugurate a promising line of inquiry. Rather, this special issue joins a longstanding scholarly conversation while articulating a diff erent emphasis. In this spirit, the contributors consider questions that oft en recede into the background in our scholarship: What is the role of rhetoric in policymaking? How should rhetorical scholars approach public policy?

Neoliberalism, the public sphere, and a public good

ABSTRACT This essay considers the challenges that neoliberalism raises for conceptual models and practices of a multiple public sphere. Engaging difference and attending to inequality, a multiple public sphere facilitates the circulation of a dynamic public good that may articulate mutual standing and relationships among people to enable the construction of a collective “we” for coordinated action. Weakening relationships among people and devaluing coordinated action, neoliberalism envisions a public of atomistic individuals who compete with one another for comparative advantage. Flattening difference and obscuring inequality, a neoliberal public presumes a universal subject that obscures its own particularity and discounts the uneven burdens faced by those who cannot seamlessly identify with its mode of subjectivity. Further, for a neoliberal public, inequality serves as the condition and end of competition. Resistance to neoliberalism may arise in the networked locals of a multiple public sphere, as advocates reclaim connections that neoliberalism seeks to deny.

Nixon's Welfare Reform: Enacting Historical Contradictions of Poverty Discourses

This essay examines a 1969 speech by President Nixon that introduced Americans to his Family Assistance Plan, a welfare reform proposal that would have provided poor families with a minimum income guarantee. I argue that historical contradictions of poverty discourses informed Nixons speech and frustrated his attempt to articulate a new approach to federal welfare policy.