Communication as social identity
Roots of our field, we take a signitificant step toward understanding how organizing is deeply raced” (ashcraft & allen, 2003, p. 32).
And this conversation has started. Ashcraft and Allen’s (2003) examination of the racial roots of organization communication, Warren’s (2001, 2003) examination of whitnesssinthe performance studies classroom, Cooks’s (2001,2003) and others examination of the racial roots in theaching and research in intercultural communication have opened the conversation about the interwoven character of race and communication studies.
A recent discussion on CRTNET (communication Research and theory Network-the National Communication Assoociation’s (NCA’s) daily electronic news service) illustrates the kinds of institusioanal issues we’ve reviewed. This particular discussion focused on travel grants provided to students of colour to attend the NCA annual convention. Several discussants strenuously objected to these grants and questioned the ethics of awarding grants on the basis of race. Some even argued that these grants were morally indefensible. While this discussion seems to focus narrowly on the single issue of assisting students of colour to travel to the NCA convention, it also segregated field of study. On the surface, those arguing against travel grants frame the issue in terms of equity and fairness-why should some conference attendees be awarded travel grants solely on the basis of ethnicity or race? However, viewed in the larger historical context of race relations within our discipline, this argument reflects coded communicaton practice – termed ‘’whitespeake’’ by dreama Moon (1999)-which not only excludes by ignornng the larger issue, but also creates a community, through white bonding. The CRTNET exchange thus is one example of how communication (the practice, idea, and field) is raced : long-standing racialized patterns of communication and the historical organization of the disciplie empower some to speak on behalf of “fellow” white individuals who want toreproduce the dicipline’s structures of racial privilege by discouraging incentives to members of groups who historically have opted out of this discipline. This kind of community –as a scholarly, academic community-can only fail in its attemptsto build it self on that racialized foundation.
The whitness of communication isreflected in the most recent national center for education statistic (U.S Department of Education, 1993/1999) that show that 87,5% of communication faculty are white. In his study of the communication discipline, Ronald Gordon points to these statistic among others and argues that the composition of the field influences how we study communication : “The views that we have not reprecented a sample of all possible conceptual positions and points from which knowledge of communication can be constructed. Our American communication theorists have been an extremely homogeneous group”(1998/1999, p. 3). Yet, we are suggesting that the consequences of the whiteness of communication studies is not simpy that this demographic has narrowed our way of thingking about communication, but that it has also allowed discouraging barriers to be erected to keep the field the way it is.
Our call, then is to envision communication studiesin another way, with a different agenda and future. As we move toward living in a more racially divers society, as well as a more globally oriented world, a discipline that remains racially segregated risks its own viability. We wish to avert the potential marginalization of communication studies and call for beginning the long process of taking race seriously in this discipline. It already as taken seriously in the everyday practice of communication.
As an academic discipline, we risk our profession and field if we continue to ignore the significance of race and the role of race the role of race in society. The ongoing racial disparities in the united states in employment, housing , religion, and other institutions guarantee that race does matter. If communication scholars cannot or will not begin to contribute to a better understanding of the importance of communication in a racialized society, if will be increasingiy difficult to argue that communication studies is central to the mission of most universities and colleges, as many emphasize serving social and community needs.
Indeed, as noted, some communication scholars, including asharaft and allen (2003), butney (1997), Crenshaw (1997), cooks (2001, 2003), Halualani et al. (2004), Jackson and Garner (1998), and Moon (1999) have begun the long process of reconfiguring our discipline’s mission and vision. Yet, many more of us need to embrace a much more socially inclusive and responsible mission for our profession. In so doing wecan position communicationin a way that addresses social needs, situates us well to seek external fnding and grants, and universities a meaningful mission and visionboth now in the future.
Note :
1. Some HBCUs, such as tukegee, emphasized the “industrial arts” (e.g.tailoring, masonry, carpentry) as more practical approaches to helping its students survive in a white –dominated society. See conley (1990) for a more detailed history of communication.
2. We should acknowledge NCA’s policy on diversity , at http ://www.natcom .org/policies/external/diversity.htm. it calls for inclusivity (which is good )and promotion of dialogue, but it fails to emphasize that dialoguehas to be set within a context of unequal and hierarchal relations.
Additional Readings
Ashcraft, K. L. & Allen, B. J. (2003). The racial foundation of organizational communication. Communication Theory, 13, 5-38.
Bahk, C.M.,Jandt, F. E. (2004). Being white in America : Development of a scale,Howard journal of Communications, 15, 57-68.
Brodkin, K. (1999), How jews became white folks : And what says about race in America. New York: Rutgers University Press.
Buttney, R. (1997). Reported speech in talking race on campus. Human Comunnication, 23,477-506.
Cohen, H. (1994). History of the speech communication discipline : Emergence of a discipline 1914-1945. Annandale, VA: Speech communication Association.
Conley, T. (1990). Rhetoric in European traditional. New York: Longma.
Cooks, L. (2001). From distance and uncertainty to research and pedagogy in the borderlands: implication for the future of intercultural communication. Communication Theory, 11, 339-351
Cooks, L. (2003). Pedagogy, performance, and positionality: Teaching about whiteness in nterarcial communication. Communication Education, 52 .245-257.
Crenshaw, C, (1997). Resisting whiteness rhetorical silence. Western journal of communication,61,253-278.
Crowley, S., & Hawhee, D. (1999). Ancient rhetorics for contemporary students (2nd ed). Needham Heights. MA: Allyn & Bacon
De uriarte, M. L.,with bodinger –de uriarte , C., & Benavides, J. L. (2003). Diversity disconnects: From class room to news room. Retrieved December 15, 2004, from http://journalism .utexas.edu/faculty/deuriarted/diversity_disconnects.pdf
Dues, M., & Brown, M. (2004). Boxing Plato’s shadow: an introduction to be the study of human communication . Boston: McGraw-Hill.
Gordon. R. D. (1998-1999, winter-spring). A spectrum of scholars: Multicultural diversity and human communication theory. Human Communication, 2 , 1-8.
Halualani, R. T., Chitgopekar, A. S., Morrison, J. H. T. A., & Dodge, P. S. W. (2004). Diversein nameonly intercultural university. Journal of communication, 54 , 270-286.
Ignatiev, N. (1995). How the Irish became white. New York: Rotledge.
Jackson, M. F. (1998). Whitness of the a different colour : European Immigrants and the alchemy of race. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Moon, D. (1999). White enculturation and bourgeois ideology: The discursive production of “good (white) girls.”In T. K. Nakayama and J. N. Martin (eds.), Whitness: The communication of social identity (pp. 177-197). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Nakayama, T. K., & Krizek, R. L. (1995). Whitness: A strategic rhetoric. Quarterly jounal of speech, 81, 291-309.
Omi, M., & Winnant, H. (1994). Racial Formations in theunited states from the 1960’s to 1990’s. London: Rouledge.
Shankilin, E. (2000). Representations of race and racism in American anthropology. Current Anthropology, 41, 99-103.
U.S. Department of Education, Natioanal Center for Education Statistic. (1993, 1999). Table 231: percentage distribution of full-time and part-time instructional faculty and self in degree-granting institutions, by program area, race/ethnicity, andsex: fall 1992 and fall1998 (Natioal study of postsecondary faculty). Available at http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d02/tables/PDF/table23.pdf.
Warren, J. T. (2001). On the perfomative dimensions of race in the classroom. Communication Education, 50 , 91-108.
Warren, J. T. (2003). Performing purity: whitness, pedagogy, and the reconstitution of power. New York: Peter Lang.
Wells, S. (2002). The journey of man: A genetic odyssey. Princeton, NJ. Pricenton University Press.
Communication as social identity
Jake harwood
Conformity is bad. We should be ourselves and celebrate our individuality. Or in the words of cartoonist Gary Larson’s penguin, struk in a flock of udentical penguins, “I’v just gotta be me!” so goes the mantra of modern(western) world, and so, often, goes our understanding of human communication . we study individuals, how they talks, why they talk . we examine relationship to be sure but often we are interested in inherently individualistic processes-satifaction or feelings (personal feelings) of intimacy. Perspectives such as social exchange theory have us performing mental calculation of the personal rewards and costs provided by our friends and lovers. Our selves tend to be understood as very “personal” selve, operating as outonomous units, either unconnected to others, or connected as a function of the rewards provided to the individual. In contrast, when people oprate in terms of more collective interest , yhey are ussualy concidered in deviant or pathological terms. Rioters throwing rock at police football hooligans on a rampage and soldiers killing the enemy (without considering their individual characteristic) are often considered to be acting at a “less than human” level.
The social identity/self categorization offers a different take on our social experience (tajfel and turner 1986: oakes, Haslam and turner 1994). This approach (put broadly) states that an individual self can be understood at different levels of abstraction. At the individual (personal identity) level,we are concerned with our difference from other individuals and the things that make us unique as people. At the collective (social identity) level, we are concerned with our groups differences from other groups and the things that make our group unique. When operating at the level of social identity, individuals act as group members understand and judge the baviors of self and others in tearms of group membership, and tend to deindividuate both self and others. It is crucial to note that this deidividuation is not regarded as a phatological or somehow more primitive mode of functioning. From this perspective, operating in terms of groups is an inherent part of being human (turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, and wetherell , 1987). Such functioning makes institutions like families, governments and teams possible, and allows us to enjoy the benefits that come from collective activity. However, it also has negative consequences in terms of, for instance, the ways in which deindividuating self and others can lead to prejudice and intergroup conflict. This general approach has been characterized as an intergroup approach, and the current chapter explains why this approach and social identity theory in particular is a useful way for us to approach human communication (see Harwood and Giles, 2005, for a review of social identity approaches to communication).
This intergroup approach provides some unique tools for understanding social behavior. For instance, Reicher (1986) has provided a number of insight into the behavior of crowds, particularly in riot situations. Understanding the behavior of the individuals in a crowd in terms of their operation at a superordinate level of identity provides a greater understanding of such behavior than does examinintanding of such behavior than does examining the riot as the work of a mass of lunatics hell-bent on destruction. Similarly the intergroup approach also draws attention to the contribution of both sides in a crowd situation. Police or other authorities contribute to such situations, and yet the way in which they conceive of themselves in terms of identities and their perceptions of the rioters are rarely examined (stott and Reicher, 1998). The one exception to this occurs when it serves our political purposes. For instance when behaviors by authorities in other regimes conveniently can be characterized as repressive or anti democratitic, western media feel comfortable in describing them as such (for example, think of how western media convered thecrackdown on democratic protest in China’s Tiananmen Square in 1989). The focus on civil disturbances in the west, however, tends to be almost exlusively on the behavior of the “rioters” rather than on the authorities. Hence, an intergroup approach provides an understanding of the behavior of people in these situations, as well as the ways in which the situations are framed by observers.
Crowds and riots are not the primary fodder for communication researchers. Therefore in the following section, I provide some brief examples of how themes central to contemporary communication research can be reexamined (and perhaps revitalized) by an intergroup perspective.
And this conversation has started. Ashcraft and Allen’s (2003) examination of the racial roots of organization communication, Warren’s (2001, 2003) examination of whitnesssinthe performance studies classroom, Cooks’s (2001,2003) and others examination of the racial roots in theaching and research in intercultural communication have opened the conversation about the interwoven character of race and communication studies.
A recent discussion on CRTNET (communication Research and theory Network-the National Communication Assoociation’s (NCA’s) daily electronic news service) illustrates the kinds of institusioanal issues we’ve reviewed. This particular discussion focused on travel grants provided to students of colour to attend the NCA annual convention. Several discussants strenuously objected to these grants and questioned the ethics of awarding grants on the basis of race. Some even argued that these grants were morally indefensible. While this discussion seems to focus narrowly on the single issue of assisting students of colour to travel to the NCA convention, it also segregated field of study. On the surface, those arguing against travel grants frame the issue in terms of equity and fairness-why should some conference attendees be awarded travel grants solely on the basis of ethnicity or race? However, viewed in the larger historical context of race relations within our discipline, this argument reflects coded communicaton practice – termed ‘’whitespeake’’ by dreama Moon (1999)-which not only excludes by ignornng the larger issue, but also creates a community, through white bonding. The CRTNET exchange thus is one example of how communication (the practice, idea, and field) is raced : long-standing racialized patterns of communication and the historical organization of the disciplie empower some to speak on behalf of “fellow” white individuals who want toreproduce the dicipline’s structures of racial privilege by discouraging incentives to members of groups who historically have opted out of this discipline. This kind of community –as a scholarly, academic community-can only fail in its attemptsto build it self on that racialized foundation.
The whitness of communication isreflected in the most recent national center for education statistic (U.S Department of Education, 1993/1999) that show that 87,5% of communication faculty are white. In his study of the communication discipline, Ronald Gordon points to these statistic among others and argues that the composition of the field influences how we study communication : “The views that we have not reprecented a sample of all possible conceptual positions and points from which knowledge of communication can be constructed. Our American communication theorists have been an extremely homogeneous group”(1998/1999, p. 3). Yet, we are suggesting that the consequences of the whiteness of communication studies is not simpy that this demographic has narrowed our way of thingking about communication, but that it has also allowed discouraging barriers to be erected to keep the field the way it is.
Our call, then is to envision communication studiesin another way, with a different agenda and future. As we move toward living in a more racially divers society, as well as a more globally oriented world, a discipline that remains racially segregated risks its own viability. We wish to avert the potential marginalization of communication studies and call for beginning the long process of taking race seriously in this discipline. It already as taken seriously in the everyday practice of communication.
As an academic discipline, we risk our profession and field if we continue to ignore the significance of race and the role of race the role of race in society. The ongoing racial disparities in the united states in employment, housing , religion, and other institutions guarantee that race does matter. If communication scholars cannot or will not begin to contribute to a better understanding of the importance of communication in a racialized society, if will be increasingiy difficult to argue that communication studies is central to the mission of most universities and colleges, as many emphasize serving social and community needs.
Indeed, as noted, some communication scholars, including asharaft and allen (2003), butney (1997), Crenshaw (1997), cooks (2001, 2003), Halualani et al. (2004), Jackson and Garner (1998), and Moon (1999) have begun the long process of reconfiguring our discipline’s mission and vision. Yet, many more of us need to embrace a much more socially inclusive and responsible mission for our profession. In so doing wecan position communicationin a way that addresses social needs, situates us well to seek external fnding and grants, and universities a meaningful mission and visionboth now in the future.
Note :
1. Some HBCUs, such as tukegee, emphasized the “industrial arts” (e.g.tailoring, masonry, carpentry) as more practical approaches to helping its students survive in a white –dominated society. See conley (1990) for a more detailed history of communication.
2. We should acknowledge NCA’s policy on diversity , at http ://www.natcom .org/policies/external/diversity.htm. it calls for inclusivity (which is good )and promotion of dialogue, but it fails to emphasize that dialoguehas to be set within a context of unequal and hierarchal relations.
Additional Readings
Ashcraft, K. L. & Allen, B. J. (2003). The racial foundation of organizational communication. Communication Theory, 13, 5-38.
Bahk, C.M.,Jandt, F. E. (2004). Being white in America : Development of a scale,Howard journal of Communications, 15, 57-68.
Brodkin, K. (1999), How jews became white folks : And what says about race in America. New York: Rutgers University Press.
Buttney, R. (1997). Reported speech in talking race on campus. Human Comunnication, 23,477-506.
Cohen, H. (1994). History of the speech communication discipline : Emergence of a discipline 1914-1945. Annandale, VA: Speech communication Association.
Conley, T. (1990). Rhetoric in European traditional. New York: Longma.
Cooks, L. (2001). From distance and uncertainty to research and pedagogy in the borderlands: implication for the future of intercultural communication. Communication Theory, 11, 339-351
Cooks, L. (2003). Pedagogy, performance, and positionality: Teaching about whiteness in nterarcial communication. Communication Education, 52 .245-257.
Crenshaw, C, (1997). Resisting whiteness rhetorical silence. Western journal of communication,61,253-278.
Crowley, S., & Hawhee, D. (1999). Ancient rhetorics for contemporary students (2nd ed). Needham Heights. MA: Allyn & Bacon
De uriarte, M. L.,with bodinger –de uriarte , C., & Benavides, J. L. (2003). Diversity disconnects: From class room to news room. Retrieved December 15, 2004, from http://journalism .utexas.edu/faculty/deuriarted/diversity_disconnects.pdf
Dues, M., & Brown, M. (2004). Boxing Plato’s shadow: an introduction to be the study of human communication . Boston: McGraw-Hill.
Gordon. R. D. (1998-1999, winter-spring). A spectrum of scholars: Multicultural diversity and human communication theory. Human Communication, 2 , 1-8.
Halualani, R. T., Chitgopekar, A. S., Morrison, J. H. T. A., & Dodge, P. S. W. (2004). Diversein nameonly intercultural university. Journal of communication, 54 , 270-286.
Ignatiev, N. (1995). How the Irish became white. New York: Rotledge.
Jackson, M. F. (1998). Whitness of the a different colour : European Immigrants and the alchemy of race. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Moon, D. (1999). White enculturation and bourgeois ideology: The discursive production of “good (white) girls.”In T. K. Nakayama and J. N. Martin (eds.), Whitness: The communication of social identity (pp. 177-197). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Nakayama, T. K., & Krizek, R. L. (1995). Whitness: A strategic rhetoric. Quarterly jounal of speech, 81, 291-309.
Omi, M., & Winnant, H. (1994). Racial Formations in theunited states from the 1960’s to 1990’s. London: Rouledge.
Shankilin, E. (2000). Representations of race and racism in American anthropology. Current Anthropology, 41, 99-103.
U.S. Department of Education, Natioanal Center for Education Statistic. (1993, 1999). Table 231: percentage distribution of full-time and part-time instructional faculty and self in degree-granting institutions, by program area, race/ethnicity, andsex: fall 1992 and fall1998 (Natioal study of postsecondary faculty). Available at http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d02/tables/PDF/table23.pdf.
Warren, J. T. (2001). On the perfomative dimensions of race in the classroom. Communication Education, 50 , 91-108.
Warren, J. T. (2003). Performing purity: whitness, pedagogy, and the reconstitution of power. New York: Peter Lang.
Wells, S. (2002). The journey of man: A genetic odyssey. Princeton, NJ. Pricenton University Press.
Communication as social identity
Jake harwood
Conformity is bad. We should be ourselves and celebrate our individuality. Or in the words of cartoonist Gary Larson’s penguin, struk in a flock of udentical penguins, “I’v just gotta be me!” so goes the mantra of modern(western) world, and so, often, goes our understanding of human communication . we study individuals, how they talks, why they talk . we examine relationship to be sure but often we are interested in inherently individualistic processes-satifaction or feelings (personal feelings) of intimacy. Perspectives such as social exchange theory have us performing mental calculation of the personal rewards and costs provided by our friends and lovers. Our selves tend to be understood as very “personal” selve, operating as outonomous units, either unconnected to others, or connected as a function of the rewards provided to the individual. In contrast, when people oprate in terms of more collective interest , yhey are ussualy concidered in deviant or pathological terms. Rioters throwing rock at police football hooligans on a rampage and soldiers killing the enemy (without considering their individual characteristic) are often considered to be acting at a “less than human” level.
The social identity/self categorization offers a different take on our social experience (tajfel and turner 1986: oakes, Haslam and turner 1994). This approach (put broadly) states that an individual self can be understood at different levels of abstraction. At the individual (personal identity) level,we are concerned with our difference from other individuals and the things that make us unique as people. At the collective (social identity) level, we are concerned with our groups differences from other groups and the things that make our group unique. When operating at the level of social identity, individuals act as group members understand and judge the baviors of self and others in tearms of group membership, and tend to deindividuate both self and others. It is crucial to note that this deidividuation is not regarded as a phatological or somehow more primitive mode of functioning. From this perspective, operating in terms of groups is an inherent part of being human (turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, and wetherell , 1987). Such functioning makes institutions like families, governments and teams possible, and allows us to enjoy the benefits that come from collective activity. However, it also has negative consequences in terms of, for instance, the ways in which deindividuating self and others can lead to prejudice and intergroup conflict. This general approach has been characterized as an intergroup approach, and the current chapter explains why this approach and social identity theory in particular is a useful way for us to approach human communication (see Harwood and Giles, 2005, for a review of social identity approaches to communication).
This intergroup approach provides some unique tools for understanding social behavior. For instance, Reicher (1986) has provided a number of insight into the behavior of crowds, particularly in riot situations. Understanding the behavior of the individuals in a crowd in terms of their operation at a superordinate level of identity provides a greater understanding of such behavior than does examinintanding of such behavior than does examining the riot as the work of a mass of lunatics hell-bent on destruction. Similarly the intergroup approach also draws attention to the contribution of both sides in a crowd situation. Police or other authorities contribute to such situations, and yet the way in which they conceive of themselves in terms of identities and their perceptions of the rioters are rarely examined (stott and Reicher, 1998). The one exception to this occurs when it serves our political purposes. For instance when behaviors by authorities in other regimes conveniently can be characterized as repressive or anti democratitic, western media feel comfortable in describing them as such (for example, think of how western media convered thecrackdown on democratic protest in China’s Tiananmen Square in 1989). The focus on civil disturbances in the west, however, tends to be almost exlusively on the behavior of the “rioters” rather than on the authorities. Hence, an intergroup approach provides an understanding of the behavior of people in these situations, as well as the ways in which the situations are framed by observers.
Crowds and riots are not the primary fodder for communication researchers. Therefore in the following section, I provide some brief examples of how themes central to contemporary communication research can be reexamined (and perhaps revitalized) by an intergroup perspective.
Categories:
Communication as social identity
Postingan
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar