Civic Communion: The Rhetoric of Community Building

(Paperback)

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Description

How does community arise in and exist through communication Blending theory and case studies, Civic Communion looks at community-building in rural America and how civic-minded people come together through a variety of ways, such as hosting and attending festivals, addressing conflict, planning the community, and maintaining heritage museums. David E. Procter's insightful work reveals a specific and significant form of community 'talk' that serves to build and sustain community.

Reviews

Civic Communication is a pleasure to read. It represents a wealth of scholarship, but it is David Procter's unmistakable voice that brings to life the people and their performances as they enact the bonds and practices of civic communion. I find it inspirational and a call to the discipline to pursue this most fruitful line of contribution. Graduate students will benefit from the careful research, undergraduates from its life-expanding vision, and both from the deep sense of civic responsibility that it imparts. -- James A. Anderson, University of Utah
Procter's book is a perceptive contemporary account of rural community and rural community development processes in the Great Plains, with applicability beyond this region. Moreover, he has added a valuable tool to our kit of heuristic devices for facilitating community development processes. * Great Plains Research *
Procter is a gifted ethnographer and rhetorician who makes highly productive use of those gifts to make sense of, and to story, the relational, symbolic, and communal aspects of building a shared sense of time, place, and meanings among rural people in the heartland. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the study of real people using everyday communication to create meaning in communities. -- Bud Goodall, Arizona State University

Author Bio

David E. Procter is associate professor of speech communication and director of the Institute for Civic Discourse and Democracy at Kansas State University.