Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Our paper centers embodiment as a theme and a process in research through describing the fine-grained practices and everyday interactions that shape collaborative research in the contexts of watershed restoration and environmental monitoring. We focus on embodiment because it offers a means for attending to the process and politics of knowledge production within and across boundaries. We offer two case studies that focus on embodiment to structure research processes and shape ongoing, emergent, and collaborative research practices. We argue technical communication as a field is well positioned to include embodied practices in research design and writing.

The phrase “It’s just a cycle” is commonly articulated in coastal resilience efforts and it also shapes broader public debates about climate change. Identifying the structure of arguments around cycles is a useful starting point for defining differences in perspective, but there is more to competing claims about cycles. It is this more that this essay aims to explore, starting with an opening example from an engaged rhetorical ethnographic project with Maine’s clam fishery. The example helps set up a methodological orientation to working with cycles within resilience-focused collaborations that draws from aesthetics and poetics. This approach aims to show how cycles shape world making and how attending to cycles as a trope can create a space for critical disruptions of colonial patterns. This is a space of intimate connection that allows cyclical rhythms, like those of tides, to help reveal a passageway to resilience.

Book Review| March 01 2019 Democracy’s Lot: Rhetoric, Publics, and the Places of Invention Democracy’s Lot: Rhetoric, Publics, and the Places of Invention. By Candice Rai. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2016; pp. xiii + 244. $54.95 cloth. Bridie McGreavy Bridie McGreavy University of Maine Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2019) 22 (1): 149–152. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.22.1.0149 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Bridie McGreavy; Democracy’s Lot: Rhetoric, Publics, and the Places of Invention. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 March 2019; 22 (1): 149–152. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.22.1.0149 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2019 Michigan State University Board of Trustees2019 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

ABSTRACT Rhetoric teems with ecologically inclined thoughts. This article's interest in “ecology” arises from the circumstance of rhetoric's multiple ontologies. We revise three commonplaces of theory to support discussions that follow from understanding rhetoric's ontology as an emergent, materially diverse phenomenon, shifting the emphasis from agency to capacity, from violence to vulnerability, and from recalcitrance to resilience. The proposed commonplaces treat ecology as an orientation to patterns and relationships in the world, not as a science. The article is organized by these three interrelated transitions. The first transition defines capacity more fully in contrast to symbol use as human agency. The second moves from thinking of rhetorical force as imposition, which is tied to violence, to understanding it as a distributed sense of capacity derived from mutual vulnerabilities between entities. The third suggests that the persistence of rhetorical capacities stems from systemic adaptability and sustainability (resilience) rather than individuated abilities to resist (recalcitrance).

Ecological engagement is about attending to the possibilities of dwelling in a place; skunkwork is a way of orienting this dwelling. Skunkwork refers to creative, self-coordinated, collective work in informal spaces of learning and reminds us that ecologically attuned work in the world can promote unexpected, yet collectively desired, change. In this essay, we describe how we used skunkwork to orient our ecological engagement in two workshops on ‘community resilience.’ In both workshops, Boulder Creek became our commonplace, with its history of flooding and abatements as well as one city’s planning and management of crisis and sustainability. We draw from our respective home ecologies and our collective experiences in these workshops to highlight how four attributes of skunkwork and ecological engagement, namely proximity, movement, ecological narration, and weak theory, contribute to community engagement scholarship and advocacy.