[Ethnocomm] e-seminar

Mon Feb 8 18:33:16 UTC 2016

Hi all,

I would like to address Kris's question about positive interdisciplinary
experiences briefly.

I have always enjoyed combining approaches and seeing what I can learn from
a new perspective. My dissertation in 2004 used rhetoric and ethnography of
communication to study deliberation and local democracy in a New England
Town Meeting legislative body. I made a call to readers of the Quarterly
Journal of Speech to examine local communication (by reviewing books in
political science, urban planning, media). Since then, I have worked with
civil engineers and transportation planners, to help understand and develop
public engagement processes, as well as to understand how social networks
affect perceptions on public safety.  

Transportation is an area I am completely fascinated by. How we move from
place to place, physically, how we create infrastructures that support
certain kinds of connections and regulate interactions has both a very
applied focus, as well as a theoretical one. (When one considers refugees,
they have transported themselves, or been transported, to new places.
Communication itself moves about; how does it move? Where is it going?) It
also involves a public/private dichotomy. (When one drives/rides in a bus,
or drives/rides in a car, or when one crosses a street, their bodies can be
seen by others, interpreted by others..encoded in particular ways.)

To your larger point, however, because I am a faculty member (professor of
Communication, in a Department of Com. & Humanities) at a community college,
research and publication is not required, but is (often, not always)
appreciated. For my current project, I am working with a statistician and
transportation engineer. This is my first experience in this kind of a
project. 

Here departmental faculty do not have authority over one another; tenure,
and promotion are handled by an all-college faculty committee, with
recommendations to administration. Therefore one must be able to make one's
case using  a completely different way of speaking. Any argument for
promotion or tenure must be able to makes sense to someone from criminal
justice, math, business, or psychology, or. The point is that when one is at
an institution where the name of the journal is a binary, where it either
counts or does not count, there is little room for rhetorical strategy,
explanation, or description and interpretation of one's work. 

Best,

Becky

References

Townsend, Rebecca M. "Transporting Communication: Community College Students
Facilitate Deliberation in Their Own Communities" in Deliberative Pedagogy
and Democratic Engagement. Eds. Timothy J. Shaffer, Nicholas V. Longo, Idit
Manosevitch, and Maxine S. Thomas.  Michigan State UP. (anticipated 2016).

---. "Mapping Routes to Our Roots: Student Civic Engagement in
Transportation Planning." Service-Learning at the American Community
College: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives. Eds. Amy Traver & Zivah
Perel Katz. Palgrave Macmillan. 2014.

---. "Engaging 'Others' in Civic Engagement through Ethnography of
Communication." Journal of Applied Communication Research, 41 (2013):
202-208. 

---. "Town Meeting as a Communication Event: Democracy's Act Sequence."
Research on Language and Social Interaction.  42 (2009): 68-89.

---. "Local Communication Studies."  Lead Review Essay.  Quarterly Journal
of Speech 92 (2006): 202-222.

---. "Widening the Circumference of Scene: Local Politics, Local
Metaphysics." KBJournal. Spring 2006.   <http://www.kbjournal.org/townsend>
www.kbjournal.org/townsend 

---. Review of Jay Jordan's "Dell Hymes, Kenneth Burke's 'Identification,'
and the Birth of Sociolinguistics" [Rhetoric Review 24 (2005): 264-279].
KBJournal. Spring 2006.  <http://www.kbjournal.org/townsend2>
www.kbjournal.org/townsend2

From: Ethnocomm [mailto:ethnocomm-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] On
Behalf Of Kris Acheson-Clair
Sent: Sunday, February 07, 2016 7:29 PM
To: ETHNOCOMM at listserv.linguistlist.org
Subject: Re: [Ethnocomm] e-seminar

When I first read the Katriel and Leeds-Hurwitz texts, I was struck by the
positive tone of each piece - commendably, they seem to me full of
excitement and possibility. I used to believe myself an optimist, but
perhaps after a couple of decades of critical scholarship that is no longer
entirely the case, for Trudy Milburn's cautionary discussion of "questions
to grapple with" resonated with me strongly. After going back and taking
another look at my earlier notes, especially on Wendy's section on
Interdisciplinarity, I felt compelled to add my voice here.

My own experience with interdisciplinarity has been a bit disheartening, to
be frank. Although it functions as a buzz word at the institutional level,
often finding its way into discourses of strategic goals and initiatives,
it seems to me at the departmental level that interdisciplinarity is
commonly resisted. The tree metaphor is useful here: folks in different
branches not only often have no idea what is happening elsewhere, even in
parallel branches where the same kinds of tools (like EC) are being used and
the same phenomena are of interest, but also sometimes discount out of hand
work done elsewhere, for example not counting towards tenure studies
published in cognate disciplines and limiting new hires to scholars with a
very particular degree or career trajectory. 

I greatly appreciated the historical perspective that Wendy further
developed at the beginning of her response, and in a continued spirit of
hope for the future I would love to hear from contemporary EC scholars who
are successfully working in very interdisciplinary ways. Perhaps your
academic home is outside of Communication or you have an appointment across
departments. Perhaps you consistently work in interdisciplinary research
teams. Perhaps you publish widely outside of your primary field. Please
inspire those of us who have met resistance when crossing boundaries: What
insights do your positive interdisciplinary experiences offer for this
vision of EC's future?

Thanks,

Kris

Kris Acheson

Director of Undergraduate Studies

Department of Applied Linguistics

Georgia State University

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