The study of communication deepens our understanding of the human condition, enlarges how we frame and resolve human problems and struggles, and allows us to appreciate the different perspectives that communication brings to the study of the human experience. Introducing Communication provides an overview of eight different communication perspectives and explores important concepts from around the world, highlighting the consequences and implications that come with diverse ways of defining, understanding, and studying communication. Featuring discussions on issues and challenges associated with mass globalization and new technologies, this smart and sophisticated text encourages students to reflect on how these consequences and implications come to bear on how we live and communicate. Introducing Communication is ideally suited for instructors who teach introductory communication courses and are seeking a text that is theoretically rigorous, intellectually expansive, and pedagogically elegant.

Examining actual policy to identify the facts, this book exposes how racially charged political and legal debates over immigration reform in the United States continue to inform our immigration policy. Immigration reform policies continue to influence domains like housing ordinances, official language laws, mass deportation, and bilingual education, amongst many other topics. In this work, authors Donathan Brown and Amardo Rodriguez demonstrate how immigration policies belie simplistic conversations pertaining to border control. Their focus is on actual policy as opposed to mere headlines and "talking points," as it is policy and the debates that it produces that inform the headlines and subsequently incite controversy and heated arguments. Each chapter of the book addresses both policies and the fallout they produce to clearly articulate how such policies usurp fact with fiction, producing residual messages that equate "diversity" with destroying our social and political order. This accessible book provides high school, college, and graduate-level students insight into the laws and lawsuits stemming from current legislation, an understanding of the peculiar racial dimensions intertwined in these policies and debates, as well as comprehension of immigration reform against the grander backdrop of the growing Latino demographic in the United States. The authors argue that the varying degrees of immigration reform passed by state legislatures throughout the country are based on thinking that ignores the sociopolitical and cultural realities of modern-day America and continue to rely less on facts and more on fear, causing greater deep-seated paranoia, distrust, and resentment within our nation. Covers policies pertaining to immigrants and immigration reform and relates these policies to associated topics such as language, bilingual education, housing, borders, and voting rights Provides immigration policy analyses that are engaging and accessible to a wide range of readers Examines past policy actions as well as findings from recent case studies, allowing readers to grasp the specific racial dimensions intertwined in these controversial policies and debates

""What is the promise of intercultural communication in a post-September 11 world-one that seems to be increasingly threatened by religious differences?"" ""Can intercultural communication ultimately bring peace and prosperity among different people…or are aggression and conflict inevitable?"" In Intercultural Communication: An Ecological Approach, the authors respond to these questions as well as concerns that changing population and religious trends threaten the stability and prosperity of the United States. The authors believe that communication is always laden with possibility, including the possibility of harmony among different peoples. Intercultural Communication addresses, openly and honestly, the issues, perceived or real, that arise when communicating with people from different backgrounds-their traditions, predispositions, and persuasions. Features: Introduces a new intercultural communication framework that moves beyond the limits of multiculturalism. Develops the thesis that intercultural problems are fundamentally communication problems rather than problems of differences. Debunks the popular claim that language diversity impedes communication and thereby poses a threat to social cohesion. Introduces a definition of communication that defines communication as a mode of being and becoming rather than merely a means of relaying messages or sharing meanings. Redefines diversity in terms of processes, relationships, and environs rather than merely in terms of differences. Develops the claim that our emerging global, multicultural, and plural world is presenting us with new challenges and resources that can allow us to enter a new realm of being human that reflects a larger and richer understanding of the human condition. Integrates contemporary case studies from the United States, as well as from around the world, into nearly every discussion.

Communication, Space, and Design looks at how our worldview shapes our relations to and conceptions of space and place, and how our spaces and designs impact our communication practices. By asserting that our spaces and designs are increasingly promoting various expressions of separation, this book contends that this separation makes us more private. We find this increasing inwardness, for example, in the rise of gated-communities, exclusionary suburbs, and hyper-suburbs. Ultimately, the book asks how our spaces and designs impact our understanding and embodying of democracy, civility, and justice. It also explores how this inward turn limits our sense of obligation to the world and each other by undermining our ability to develop the communicational resiliency and moral sophistication that comes through public interactions.

This volume is a unique and provocative contribution to the current debates on multiculturalism in the United States. The author argues that the discourse of multiculturalism has been hampered by a focus on the political and social (secular) implications of multiculturalism, and this has led to a subsequent failure to examine multiculturalism/diversity as existantial and spiritual dimensions of humanity. Issues covered include contemporary public discourse on notions about and roles of culture, national identity, language and education. The author brings a humanist perspective to bear on this analysis - a firm belief that diversity is a human concern that transcends any single ideology or ethnicity. Another strength of this work is its grounding in contemporary public/popular discourse and issues.

The goal of Essays on Communication & Spirituality is to expand students' understanding of communication theory and inquiry. The editor and contributors aim to present the beginning position of an emerging discourse in the communication field. The collection's essays explore the potential contribution of spirituality for the study of communication. They also examine and illustrate how scholarly work that is premised on such spiritual assumptions reshapes our understanding of communication. Essays on Communication & Spirituality is intended as a supplemental text for any foundational communication course that explores different understandings of communication.

This volume argues that discussing liberation limits our understanding by avoiding the origins of hierarchy. Examining this topic, the author raises the stakes in debates about liberation, challenging what passes for common ground and moving discussions to moral, existential and spiritual realms.

Home and exile have become key discussions in discourses of globalization, cosmopolitanism, postcolonialism, transnationalism, identity, and multiculturalism. These discourses can be expected to flourish in the future as an increasing number of multicultural scholars struggle with various kinds of displacements and the meaning of home that is thereby instantiated anew as we experience living in between cultures. This book sits in the intersection between cultural studies and performance studies. It seeks to break theoretical and empirical ground by reframing understandings of home and exile. Popular notions of exile forwarded by transnational and postcolonial scholars position home as a place of return and longing. While we believe that there are many truths in this position, we performatively seek emergent forms of displacement that are demanding new frameworks with which to enact meanings of home and exile.