It's Not Just Dinner: Meal Delivery Kits as Food Media for Food Citizens

Meal kit delivery services rhetorically appeal to middle class consumers who have busy lives, but want to eat good quality food without the hassle of grocery shopping and meal planning. In this paper, we advance three arguments to explore the cultural phenomenon of these meal services that are growing exponentially across the United States and in other countries. First, such meal kits, in their efforts to provide meal and ingredient variation, decontextualize food cultures while promoting a consumer sense of cosmopolitanism. Second, meal kit companies have attempted to address environmental concerns of waste production, but many of those problems have yet to be resolved despite rhetorical appeals to the contrary. Finally, while such meal kits do not address fully the challenges and problems of global food production and capitalist systems, they do confront those who use them with some of the realities of where their food comes from and what kind of waste it produces. We ultimately argue that such companies manifest the return of the repressed through the material and rhetorical production of food and waste even as they employ diverse cultural food options and erase those cultural origins at the same time. Meal kit delivery services' interactivity and confrontation with waste distinguishes them from traditional food media. Despite their investment in the performative dimensions of cooking as a way to reconnect with the food system, they also miss opportunities to address gender, culture, and waste, which limits the radical potential of that performativity

Rare’s Conservation Campaigns: Community Decision Making and Public Participation for Behavioral Change in Indonesia, China, and Latin America

In this chapter we explore the ways in which Rare, an international non-profit organization, uses institutional, practical, and local knowledge as a symbolic resource to create environmental change. Rare’s approach involves identifying human behaviors that cause threats to biodiversity, using social science research to identify community-based and public participation solutions to change these behaviors, launching a Pride campaign designed to instill pride within a local community and to facilitate the removal of barriers to conservation, and adapting conservation solutions on a broader scale. Such an approach enables Rare and its campaign managers to draw on expertise from all kinds of backgrounds, experiences, and different knowledge bases that allows for contextual and effective behavior change in conservation rooted in public participation and community empowerment. Rare partners with The University of Texas at El Paso to offer a master’s degree program for Pride campaign managers, and we have collected data while supervising the coursework and assignments for this program through qualitative approaches, such as ethnography, interviews, and field site visits, and quantitative approaches, such as knowledge-attitude-practice (KAP) surveys implemented by our students (the Rare campaign managers). Based on these data, we offer case studies from three regions where Rare works: Indonesia, Latin America, and China. While conservation efforts often focus on tangible material resources, limiting the available options for change, we ultimately argue that Rare’s focus on symbolic resources in Pride campaigns uses the paradigm of constructed potentiality (Foss & Foss, 2011), generating multiple options for creating change through public participation

Reconceptualizing Rhetorical Activism in Contemporary Feminist Contexts

Feminist activism has long incorporated the rhetorical strategies of public protest and confrontation. However, feminist thought has also produced forms of activism that both include and move beyond these traditional rhetorical options. This essay explores the rhetorical exigencies of contemporary feminist activism, and then examines examples of rhetorical activism that play an integral part in contemporary feminism, such as creating grassroot models of leadership, using strategic humor, building feminist identity, sharing stories, and challenging stereotypes. This activism contributes not only to our understanding of the rhetoric of contemporary feminism, but also extends the rhetorical theories of social movements and counterpublics to include alternative kinds of activist options. KEYTERMS activism, social protest, counterpublics, social movements, third wave feminism During the past 50 years, communication scholars have written extensively on the rhetorical meanings and functions of social protest, change, and movements. Whether implicitly or explicitly, rhetorical studies of social movements and social protest have suggested that at the center of such discourse is an exigency for change and a methodology relying on public protest. Although the women's suffrage movement, the civil rights movements of Equal contributions and collaborative effort were provided by both authors

Place-Based Dialogics: Adaptive Cultural and Interpersonal Approaches to Environmental Conservation

This study examines conservation campaigns and how they employ place-based interpersonal communication tactics to better engage local communities in rural locations in Indonesia, Philippines, and Colombia. In collaboration with the non-governmental organization Rare, the authors explore how social marketing campaigns coupled with interpersonal communication can influence communities that are often considered the most marginalized and affected by environmental problems. Field research was conducted in Indonesia since 2008 and Colombia since 2014. Ethnography through participant observation and interviews were primary methods for data collection as well as a thorough analysis of organizational documents, such as websites, blogs, reports, and other written work. Using theories of dialogue and place-based studies of interpersonal communication, three key campaign strategies emerged from our research. First, cooperative engagement through semi-formalized information sharing is an important component of building a campaign in rural areas, which might include key stakeholder meetings, relationship building with local governmental, religious, and community leaders, and training sessions with local farmers or fishers. A second approach is based on critical listening and understanding through word of mouth involvement, such as community activities and improved understanding of the challenges that local people face in their communities. Finally, a third approach relates to the recognition of difference through engaging local culture. Campaign managers have used religious leaders, local languages, traditional customs and activities, and other place-based approaches to create inclusive conservation campaigns. These strategies demonstrate that conservation campaigns require intense interpersonal dialogue, long-term commitment, and place-based understanding

Engaging complex temporalities in environmental rhetoric

In this essay, we identify a temporal turn in environmental rhetoric. As field researchers, we have experienced different senses of time bumping against one another in intercultural, ecological situations. Although these micro-experiences of time provide a constant grounding for our lives, we are also aware of the macro-expressions of time and the ways that they order our world and understanding of environmental degradation. We detail three interrelated temporal themes in environmental rhetoric. First, we delve into the practical considerations of time, articulating it in relation to how humans address environmental crises. Second, we respond back to ourselves by discussing epistemological concerns of time that emphasize knowing as critical to appropriate action and recognizing the need for impatience in the face of colonial, sexist, and racist systems that have existed for far too long. Lastly, we unpack multiple conceptualizations of time—the ontological commitments of different entities, systems, and cultures—and ask how scholars should conduct their own work given the temporal challenges presented by environmental problems, the demands of the field, the need for radical change, and the necessity of intelligent and meaningful choices. We do not seek to resolve tensions between these three themes but deepen the field's engagement with multiple temporalities. The conclusion offers some pathways to stimulate further scholarship about environmental temporalities