This book explores how culture functions and intersects with religious groups, particularly Christians. It explores the way electronic communications, especially film and television, shape our world of meaning. Using the theories of British thinker Raymond Williams as his framework, Warren focuses on the actual process by which versions of reality are produced, the production of signification. He also draws on the ideas of Paulo Freire pointing out that cultural agency happens when individuals decide to exercise some judgment and control over the kinds of cultural material they will accept or resist.

If culture is a signifying system, says Warren, then religion is too. Contrasting values from the wider culture create dilemmas for those trying to follow a religious life. Choices either mirror the wider culture or reflect a culture of resistance. Warren seeks to help the reader develop the skills of cultural analysis by paying attention to the images that support culture, examining the life structures that support culture, and paying attention to how any particular aspect of culture is produced. Beyond all this, however, the author calls for a stance of resistance to all that violates human dignity and unity--all the aspects of culture that persons with high religious ideals cannot accept.

The Rhetorical Power of Children's Literature is an edited volume with contributions from established and new scholars of rhetoric offering case studies that analyze a full array of genres in children's literature from picture books to young adult novels. Collectively, this volume's contributions interrogate how children's literature is a powerful yet under examined space of rhetorical discourse that influences one of the most vulnerable segments of our population. This book is singularly unique given that it will be the first collection of essays on children's literature from the distinct perspective of the field of Communication. Beyond topical novelty, the contributors utilize a range of scholarly methods to analyze instances of the rhetoric of children's literature. Consequently, essays in this volume may be read for both their specific topical content and as exemplars for multiple methodological approaches to the study of the rhetoric of children's literature. Collectively, the contributors set out to contribute to our knowledge of how instances of children's literature operate as rhetorical discourses. The volume is organized by case studies approached through critical, rhetorical lenses that analyze specific instances of children's literature from two distinct stages of children's developmental reading experiences including pre/early literacy and fluent reading. Structurally, the book includes eight content chapters divided evenly with four chapters analyzing books for young children and four chapters analyzing books targeting audiences from late-childhood to adolescence. An overview of each content chapter accompanies this proposal.

The Rhetorical Power of Children's Literature is an edited volume with contributions from established and new scholars of rhetoric offering case studies that analyze a full array of genres in children's literature from picture books to young adult novels. Collectively, this volume's contributions interrogate how children's literature is a powerful yet under examined space of rhetorical discourse that influences one of the most vulnerable segments of our population. This book is singularly unique given that it will be the first collection of essays on children's literature from the distinct perspective of the field of Communication. Beyond topical novelty, the contributors utilize a range of scholarly methods to analyze instances of the rhetoric of children's literature. Consequently, essays in this volume may be read for both their specific topical content and as exemplars for multiple methodological approaches to the study of the rhetoric of children's literature. Collectively, the contributors set out to contribute to our knowledge of how instances of children's literature operate as rhetorical discourses. The volume is organized by case studies approached through critical, rhetorical lenses that analyze specific instances of children's literature from two distinct stages of children's developmental reading experiences including pre/early literacy and fluent reading. Structurally, the book includes eight content chapters divided evenly with four chapters analyzing books for young children and four chapters analyzing books targeting audiences from late-childhood to adolescence. An overview of each content chapter accompanies this proposal. is an edited volume with contributions from established and new scholars of rhetoric offering case studies that analyze a full array of genres in children's literature from picture books to young adult novels. Collectively, this volume's contributions interrogate how children's literature is a powerful yet under examined space of rhetorical discourse that influences one of the most vulnerable segments of our population. This book is singularly unique given that it will be the first collection of essays on children's literature from the distinct perspective of the field of Communication. Beyond topical novelty, the contributors utilize a range of scholarly methods to analyze instances of the rhetoric of children's literature. Consequently, essays in this volume may be read for both their specific topical content and as exemplars for multiple methodological approaches to the study of the rhetoric of children's literature. Collectively, the contributors set out to contribute to our knowledge of how instances of children's literature operate as rhetorical discourses. The volume is organized by case studies approached through critical, rhetorical lenses that analyze specific instances of children's literature from two distinct stages of children's developmental reading experiences including pre/early literacy and fluent reading. Structurally, the book includes eight content chapters divided evenly with four chapters analyzing books for young children and four chapters analyzing books targeting audiences from late-childhood to adolescence. An overview of each content chapter accompanies this proposal.

Demonstrates the intimate relationship between biological diversity and cultural diversity. The 15 contributors look at experimentation using crops such as rice, maize, beans and root crops, illustrated by case studies from India, Nepal and Nigeria among others. There are also studies of water harvesting in the Sudan and of the home gardens in South India.;The findings of this study show: farmers do experiment; farmers know their local environments intimately, and their experiments are usually site-specific; farmers have a close and detailed knowledge of local cultivators, and are well aware of the need to promote biological diversity; the experiments underlie the imporatnce of "in situ" conservation, including the protection of wild plants; and any attempts of local conservation of natural resources should involve the local inhabitants.;This collection emphasizes the importance of cultural factors and will contribute to the debate about biological diversity.

Just Remembering: Rhetorics of Genocide Remembrance and Sociopolitical Judgment analyzes a set of influential discourses of genocide remembrance to explain how public memory discourses inform sociopolitical judgment. Within this explanatory context, Just Remembering additionally asks how we might remember pasts marked by genocidal violence in ways that commit ourselves to a deeper understanding and more humane practice of justice. The chapters are thematically organized, focusing on specific sites of memory to highlight symbolic inducements of memorial discourses. Chapter 2 analyzes U.S. public discourse concerning an "Armenian Genocide" resolution to elucidate the role of politics in the production, dissemination, and maintenance of memory. Chapter 3 offers a historical account of the shift in public discourse concerning the capture of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, demonstrating how and with what consequences the discourses shifted from a focus on law to a focus on morality. Chapter 4 expands this work by analyzing how competing narrative accounts of historical figures and events (Eichmann and the Holocaust) influence what we remember, how we remember, and the ends to which we apply such memories. Chapter 5 analyzes the Report of the President's Commission on the Holocaust that produced the United States' official remembrance of the Holocaust. This chapter argues that the Commission Report provides an exemplary explanation for why we should remember and provokes a complex understanding of what we are to remember. Chapter 6 concludes the book by focusing on the productive capacity of the humanitarian aims of U.S. Holocaust remembrance.