This book examines the concept of civility and the conditions of civil disagreement in politics and education. Although many assume that civility is merely polite behavior, it functions to aid rational discourse. Building on this basic assumption, the book offers multiple accounts of civility and its contribution to citizenship, deliberative democracy, and education from Eastern and Western as well as classic and modern perspectives. Given that civility is essential to all aspects of public life, it is important to address how civility may be taught. While much of the book is theoretical, contributors also apply theory to practice, offering concrete methods for teaching civility at the high school and collegiate levels.

This book examines the concept of civility and the conditions of civil disagreement in politics and education. Although many assume that civility is merely polite behavior, it functions to aid rational discourse. Building on this basic assumption, the book offers multiple accounts of civility and its contribution to citizenship, deliberative democracy, and education from Eastern and Western as well as classic and modern perspectives. Given that civility is essential to all aspects of public life, it is important to address how civility may be taught. While much of the book is theoretical, contributors also apply theory to practice, offering concrete methods for teaching civility at the high school and collegiate levels.

The first history of racial injustice to examine how civility and white supremacy are linked, and a call for citizens who care about social justice to abandon civility and practice civic radicalism The idea and practice of civility has always been wielded to silence dissent, repress political participation, and justify violence upon people of color. Although many progressives today are told that we need to be more polite and thoughtful, less rancorous and angry, when we talk about race in America, civility maintains rather than disrupts racial injustice. Spanning two hundred years, Zamalin’s accessible blend of intellectual history, political biography, and contemporary political criticism shows that civility has never been neutral in its political uses and impacts. The best way to tackle racial inequality is through “civic radicalism,” an alternative to civility found in the actions of Black radical leaders including Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells, Martin Luther King Jr., James Baldwin, Malcolm X, and Audre Lorde. Civic radicals shock and provoke people. They name injustice and who is responsible for it. They protest, march, strike, boycott, and mobilize collectively rather than form alliances with those who fundamentally oppose them. In Against Civility, citizens who care deeply about racial and socioeconomic equality will see that they need to abandon this concept of discreet politeness when it comes to racial justice and instead more fully support disruptive actions and calls for liberation, which have already begun with movements like #MeToo, the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, and Black Lives Matter.

Since its development shaped by the turmoil of the World Wars and suspicion of new technologies such as film and radio, political communication has become a hybrid field largely devoted to connecting the dots among political rhetoric, politicians and leaders, voters' opinions, and media exposure to better understand how any one aspect can affect the others. In The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication Kate Kenski and Kathleen Hall Jamieson bring together leading scholars, including founders of the field of political communication Elihu Katz, Jay Blumler, Doris Graber, Max McCombs, and Thomas Paterson,to review the major findings about subjects ranging from the effects of political advertising and debates and understandings and misunderstandings of agenda setting, framing, and cultivation to the changing contours of social media use in politics and the functions of the press in a democratic system. The essays in this volume reveal that political communication is a hybrid field with complex ancestry, permeable boundaries, and interests that overlap with those of related fields such as political sociology, public opinion, rhetoric, neuroscience, and the new hybrid on the quad, media psychology. This comprehensive review of the political communication literature is an indispensible reference for scholars and students interested in the study of how, why, when, and with what effect humans make sense of symbolic exchanges about sharing and shared power. The sixty-two chapters in The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication contain an overview of past scholarship while providing critical reflection of its relevance in a changing media landscape and offering agendas for future research and innovation.

A New Statesman Best Book of the Year A Church Times Book of the Year We are facing a crisis of civility, a war of words polluting our public sphere. In liberal democracies committed to tolerating active, often heated disagreement, the loss of this virtue appears critical. Most modern appeals to civility follow arguments by Hobbes or Locke by proposing to suppress disagreement or exclude views we deem “uncivil” for the sake of social harmony. By comparison, mere civility—a grudging conformity to norms of respectful behavior—as defended by Rhode Island’s founder, Roger Williams, might seem minimal and unappealing. Yet Teresa Bejan argues that Williams’s outlook offers a promising path forward in confronting our own crisis, one that challenges our fundamental assumptions about what a tolerant—and civil—society should look like. “Penetrating and sophisticated.” —James Ryerson, New York Times Book Review “Would that more of us might learn to look into the past with such gravity and humility. We might end up with a more (or mere) civil society, yet.” —Los Angeles Review of Books “A deeply admirable book: original, persuasive, witty, and eloquent.” —Jacob T. Levy, Review of Politics “A terrific book—learned, vigorous, and challenging.” —Alison McQueen, Stanford University

From the pundits to the polls, nearly everyone seems to agree that US politics have rarely been more fractious, and calls for a return to “civil discourse” abound. Yet it is also true that the requirements of polite discourse effectively silence those who are not in power, gaming the system against the disenfranchised. What, then, should a democracy do? This book makes a case for understanding civility in a different light. Examining the history of the concept and its basis in communication and political theory, William Keith and Robert Danisch present a clear, robust analysis of civil discourse. Distinguishing it from politeness, they claim that civil argument must be redirected from the goal of political comity to that of building and maintaining relationships of minimal respect in the public sphere. They also take into account how civility enables discrimination, indicating conditions under which uncivil resistance is called for. When viewed as a communication practice for uniting people with differences and making them more equal, civility is transformed from a preferable way of speaking into an essential component of democratic life. Guarding against uncritical endorsement of civility as well as skepticism, Keith and Danisch show with rigor, nuance, and care that the practice of civil communication is both paradoxical and sorely needed. Beyond Civility is necessary reading for our times.