Understanding how rhetoric, and environmental rhetoric in particular, informs and is informed by local and global ecologies contributes to our conversations about sustainability and resilience — the preservation and conservation of the earth and the future of human society. This book explores some of the complex relationships, collaborations, compromises, and contradictions between human endeavor and situated discourses, identities and landscapes, social justice and natural resources, movement and geographies, unpacking and grappling with the complexities of rhetoric of presence. Making a significant contribution to exploring the complex discursive constructions of environmental rhetorics and place-based rhetorics, this collection considers discourses, actions, and adaptations concerning environmental regulations and development, sustainability, exploitation, and conservation of energy resources. Essays visit arguments on cultural values, social justice, environmental advocacy, and identity as political constructions of rhetorical place and space. Rural and urban case studies contribute to discussions of the ethics and identities of environment, and the rhetorics of environmental cartography and glocalization. Contributors represent a range of specialization across a variety of scholarly research in such fields as communication studies, rhetorical theory, social/cultural geography, technical/professional communication, cartography, anthropology, linguistics, comparative literature/ecocriticism, literacy studies, digital rhetoric/media studies, and discourse analysis. Thus, this book goes beyond the assumption that rhetorics are situated, and challenges us to consider not only how and why they are situated, but what we mean when we theorize notions of situated, place-based rhetorics.

In this volume, rhetoricians, literacy scholars, and humanists have come together to examine the complex discursive constructions of sustainability. Touching on topics including conservation efforts in specific locales; social and political constructions of rhetorical place and space; community literacy; historical and archival analysis of institutional politics, policies, and practices concerning the environment and economic growth and development; town planning and zoning issues; and rhetorics of environmental remediation and sustainability, this collection of essays provides rhetoricians and environmentalists a window into the complex and often contradictory arena of discourse on sustainability.

In this book, M. Jimmie Killingsworth and Jacqueline S. Palmer have a twofold purpose: to analyze the patterns of rhetoric used in written discourse about environmental politics and to make a practical contribution to the art of rhetorical criticism through the study of rhetoric in use. The language, professional objectivity, and research programs of scientists insulate these best-informed citizens in enclaves of specialization, limiting access to crucial information and hindering effective reformative action. Science, the authors stress, is not merely a database to rely upon but a view of the world that must be broadened in order to affect social morality. Science-based activism must arise to ensure the care and future of the environment. Killingsworth and Palmer argue that for grassroots activism to be tied to this globally conscious philosophy, a rhetoric of sustainability must be cultivated.

Environmental rhetorics have expanded awareness of mass extinction, climate change, and pervasive pollution, yet failed to generate collective action that adequately addresses such pressing matters. This book contends that the anemic response to ecological upheaval is due, in part, to an inability to navigate novel forms of environmental guilt. Combining affect theory with rhetorical analysis to examine a range of texts and media, Ecologies of Guilt in Environmental Rhetorics positions guilt as a keystone emotion for contemporary environmental communication, and explores how it is provoked, perpetuated, and framed through everyday discourse. In revealing the need for emotional literacies that productively engage our complicity in global ecological harm, the book looks to a future where guilt—and its symbiotic relationships with anger, shame, and grief—is shaped in tune with the ecologies that sustain us.

This exceptional volume examines “image events” as a rhetorical tactic utilized by environmental activists. Author Kevin Michael DeLuca analyzes widely televised environmentalist actions in depth to illustrate how the image event fulfills fundamental rhetorical functions in constructing and transforming identities, discourses, communities, cultures, and world views. Image Politics also exhibits how such events create opportunities for a politics that does not rely on centralized leadership or universal metanarratives. The book presents a rhetoric of the visual for our mediated age as it illuminates new political possibilities currently enacted by radical environmental groups. Chapters in the volume cover key areas of environmental activism such as: *The rhetoric of social movements; *Imaging social movements; *Environmental justice groups; and *Participatory democracy. This book is of interest to scholars and students of rhetorical theory, media and communication theory, visual theory, environmental studies, social change movements, and political theory. It will also appeal to others interested in ecology, radical environmental politics, and activism, and is an excellent supplemental text in advanced undergraduate and graduate level courses in these areas.

Environmental patriotism, the belief that the national environment defines a country’s greatness, is a significant strand in twentieth century American environmentalism. This book is the first to explore the history of environmental patriotism in America through the intriguing stories of environmental patriots and the rhetoric of their speeches and propaganda, The See America First movement began in 1906 with the aim of protecting and promoting the landscapes of the American West. In 1908, Gifford Pinchot and President Theodore Roosevelt hosted the White House Conservation Conference to promote the wise use of natural resources for generations of Americans. In 1912, Pittsburgh’s smoke investigation condemned the effects of coal smoke on the city’s environment. In World War II, a massive propaganda effort mobilized millions of Americans to plant victory gardens to save resources for the war abroad. While these may not seem like crucial moments for the American environmental movement, this new history of American environmentalism shows that they are linked by patriotism. The book offers a provoking critique of environmentalists’ communication strategies and suggests patriotism as a persuasive hook for new ways to make environmental issues a national priority. This original research should be of interest to scholars of environmental communication, environmental history, American history and environmental philosophy.