Oppositional Discourses and Democracies

Oppositional Discourses and Democracies

When citizens take to the streets or pack assembly halls or share their ideas through the minority press, they often give voice to truths and logic that have otherwise been given little or no airing through the available institutional channels offered by democratic states. Such discourses offer new rhetorical strategies for the expression of citizen desires, needs and emotions that otherwise go unrecognized and unaddressed. They also offer impetus for new forms of deliberation and informed action that can result in real political change. This collection explores the tensions between democratic states and the dynamics of citizen voice. In so doing, the collection addresses such questions as: What role do oppositional discourses play in increased democratization? Can oppositional discourses be sustained over time? How do states resist pressures to democratize? This volume will be of interest to students and scholars in Politics, Sociology, and Communication.

Contents

Introduction Michael Huspek Section 1: The Limits of Imperfect Democracies and How They Are Contested 1. State Ideology and Oppositional Discourses: Conceptual and Methodological Issues Peter Jones and Chik Collins 2. Ideology, Discourse and Moral Economy: Consulting the People of North Manchester Colin Barker 3. Where State Power and Opposition Collide: Discourses of Labor Protest in a New Market Economy Charles Woolfson Section 2: State Responses to Oppositional Discourses and Democratization from Below 4. Challenging New Laws with Old Values: Indigenous Resistance to State "Enforcement" of Children’s Rights in Ghana Janice Windborne 5. State Power and the Reconstitution of Parental Rights in U.S. Child Custody Mediation Lynn Comerford 6. Weaving and Unweaving the Rights of Public Woman: The Case of Telephone Operators at the Turn of the Twentieth Century J.S. Sutton Section 3: Sustained Forces of Democratization and the Effectiveness of Oppositional Discourses 7. Vigilance and Solidarity in the Rhetoric of the Black Press: The Tulsa Star, Olga Idriss Davis 8. "From the Standpoint of the White Man’s World:" The Black Press and Contemporary White Media Scholarship Michael Huspek 9. Exposing the Hypocrisies of State Power: The African-American Press and the Holocaust Felecia G. Jones Ross and Sakile Kai Camara Section 4: Normative Contours of State and Oppositional Discourses 10. The Philosophical Foundations of the Discourse Society Darryl Gunson 11. Habermas and Oppositional Public Spheres: A Stereoscopic Analysis of Competing Discourses Michael Huspek 12. The Rational Bases of Transgressive Rhetoric Michael Huspek