Familiar strangers: facework strategies in pursuit of non-binding relationships in a workplace exercise group

This chapter reports on the interaction dynamics of a workplace exercise group for beginners. Dramaturgical stress occurred here as individuals who already knew each other as competent colleagues felt embarrassed about encountering one another in this low ability exercise group. To resolve this role conflict, participants sought to define themselves as familiar strangers (which they were not) through minimal interaction in non-binding relationships. This was achieved through three types of facework strategy: not only the defensive and protective kinds that Goffman identified as saving individual faces, but also collective strategies, which sought to repair the face of the whole group. Paradoxically, therefore, in attempting to deny their “groupness,” these actors actually displayed and reinforced their solidarity as a performance team

Spatial variation in biodiversity, soil degradation and productivity in agricultural landscapes in the highlands of Tigray, northern Ethiopia

There is a growing concern about food security and sustainability of agricultural production in developing countries. However, there are limited attempts to quantify agro-biodiversity losses and relate these losses to soil degradation and crop productivity, particularly in Tigray, Ethiopia. In this study, spatial variation in agro-biodiversity and soil degradation was assessed in 2000 and 2005 at 151 farms in relation to farm, productivity, wealth, social, developmental and topographic characteristics in Tigray, northern Ethiopia. A significant decrease in agro-biodiversity was documented between 2000 and 2005, mainly associated with inorganic fertilizer use, number of credit sources and proximity to towns and major roads. Agro-biodiversity was higher at farms with higher soil fertility (available P and total N) and higher productivity (total caloric crop yield). Low soil organic matter, few crop selection criteria and steep slopes contributed to soil erosion. Sparsely and intensively cultivated land use types, as determined from satellite images, were associated with high and low agro-biodiversity classes, respectively, as determined during on-farm surveys in 2005. This study gives insight into the recent changes in and current status of agro-biodiversity and soil degradation at different spatial scales, which can help to improve food security through the maintenance of agro-biodiversity resource

Emancipatory Racial Humor as Critical Public Pedagogy: Subverting Hegemonic Racism

This essay identifies emancipatory racial humor as a disarming critical public pedagogy that confronts racial hegemony. Acknowledging the interpretive quandaries of humor and the possibilities of racist humor, this essay tells an often overlooked story of the comic “heroes” who struggle against dominant racial meanings, power relationships, and identity constructions. The essay analyzes the pedagogical possibilities of critical humorists who creatively confront hegemonic racism and whose work participates in critical projects of social, political, and cultural transformation. Such emancipatory racial humor serves as a critical public pedagogy that exposes dominant public pedagogies, injects counternarratives into the struggle over hegemony, and subverts naturalized racial meanings and privileges

Critical Intersections and Comic Possibilities: Extending Racialized Critical Rhetorical Scholarship

Communication scholars conducting work on race must engage work from complementary critical communities to bolster their own critiques and further advance progressive racial coalitions. Critical, rhetorical scholarship and Critical Race Theory (CRT) share principle aims that provide significant ground for interdisciplinary racial projects. Together, these interrelated disciplines can find reinforcement in comedic discourse. This essay locates racial comedy as a space for transformational critiques. More specifically, the author argues that critical rhetorical scholarship and CRT taken jointly can illuminate parallel comic discourses and advance their important correctives pertaining to race and racism

Prudence and Racial Humor: Troubling Epithets

Prudence is an essential virtue in a contemporary racial culture marked by the contingencies and the paradoxical in/stability of race and racism. Recurring controversies surrounding racial epithets exemplify this clash between deeply entrenched racial meanings on one hand and shifting conventions on the other. I argue in this essay that racial humor presents a valuable site for understanding and practicing prudential reasoning and performance. Analyzing three episodes from popular texts—The Boondocks, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and South Park—I illustrate the way racial humor resists prescriptive reasoning and creates possibilities for audiences to practice prudence

Critical Race Humor in a Postracial Moment: Richard Pryor’s Contemporary Parrhesia

Racial truth-telling becomes a difficult project given the current sociopolitical context that privileges postracialism and neoliberal individualism. Critical race humor, however, remains a public and popular discourse where people not only speak but also engage powerful racial truths. This article presents critical race humor as a contemporary form of parrhesia, or frank and courageous criticism. As a critical practice, parrhesia resonates with tenets of critical race scholarship and critical communication scholarship. Using the truth-telling comedy of the late Richard Pryor as a case study, this article suggests that critical race humor could be understood as parrhesia for our time. Moreover, critical race humor as a form of public pedagogy might provide people with the skills and habits of thought necessary to think critically about and transform racial knowledge and reality

Improv(ing) learning environments: How to Foster Belonging through Play

poster abstractApplied improvisation is a field in which practitioners apply the principles and practices of improvisational theater to enhance and transform relationships in real-world arenas. Applied improvisation practices have gained popularity in business and professional settings, including professional education such as medical school, law school, and management training. However, currently no research examines how applied improvisation might augment college learning environments by promoting greater student connection, focus, and presence. This research project examines how principles and practices of improvisation can be used to address two classroom challenges: 1) distraction or lack of focus/attention and 2) disengagement and disconnection from peers that hinders the development of a learning community. First, mental distractions hinder student engagement: from smart phones and online social networks to larger concerns such as academic anxieties (worrying about an upcoming test) or stresses in persona life (i.e. a troubled relationship). These distractions displace students’ attention from the immediate task of learning and limit their mental presence in class. Second, learning often remains a radically individual endeavor rather than a process of engaging with and supporting peers in a learning community. In response to these challenges, I have adapted improvisation games to use as “warm-up” activities in every class session throughout the semester. The goal is to understand whether applied improvisation promotes greater student focus and attention as well as foster connection and trust among learners, both of which result in a stronger learning community. These outcomes are particularly significant at a commuter campus where students find fewer opportunities to develop community and connection. This poster will report the results of a mixed-methods study featuring both quantitative and qualitative data. Results indicate that applied improvisation improves learning environment factors such as students’ sense of community, belonging, focus, and attention