University Press Copublishing Division / Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
Pages: 196
•
Trim: 6⅛ x 9
978-1-61147-449-7 • Hardback • December 2011 • $95.00 • (£73.00)
978-1-61147-695-8 • Paperback • March 2014 • $51.99 • (£40.00)
978-1-61147-450-3 • eBook • November 2011 • $49.00 • (£38.00)
S. Alyssa Groom is assistant professor of communication & rhetorical Studies at Duquesne University. Janie M. Harden Fritz is associate professor of communication & rhetorical studies at Duquesne University.
Acknowledgments
Contributors
Introduction
Part One:Narrativity and Situatedness
Moviegoing Epideictic: Walker Percy and the Rhetorical Tradition
Dialogic Meeting of Crisis: Illuminating Illusions Of The Death Of God and Nietzsche's Revaluation of Values
Understanding Anxiety: The Crisis of Ethical Choice
Part Two:Response-ability as Inner Transparency
Interpersonal Crisis Communication in the Workplace: Professional Civility as Ethical Response to Problematic Interactions
Questioning Back: Engaging an Organization's Narrative for Ethical Communicative Responsiveness in Crisis Situations
The Ethical Imperative Of Significant Choice: Addressing Learning Styles in Crisis Messages
Part Three:Discerning Public and Private Spheres
A More Perfect Union: Recovering Ethics in Public Dialogue
The Crisis Fallacy: Egoism, Epistemology, and Ethics in Crisis Communication and Preparation
Communication Ethics as Janus at the Gates: Responding to Postmodernity and the Normativity of Crisis
In this unified collection, Groom and Fritz (both, Duquesne Univ.) feature prominent and rising American ethics scholars. In three distinct sections, these essays establish that crisis reactions can be understood through the presentation of a narrative; investigate the idea of a productive distance between a crisis and the responder, despite the impossibility of mastering the crisis; and distinguish the differences between public and private contexts. The editors assert that a banal view of crisis has developed due to its increased permeation of public and private spheres. Celeste Grayson Seymour confirms this position in her essay, 'Understanding Anxiety: The Crisis of Ethical Choice'; she explains that this universal human crisis is due to the restless state of existence. In 'The Crisis Fallacy: Egoism, Epistemology, and Ethics in Crisis Communication and Preparation,' Pat Gehrke (Univ. of South Carolina) invites the reader to turn unreflective engagement into reflective engagement. This unique collection extends the conversation on communication ethics and crisis communication through its multiplicity of perspectives. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty.
— Choice Reviews
Over the course of nine essays broadly centered on the titular theme, the collection largely follows through on that promise, offering a variety of pragmatic, phenomenological approaches to ethical decision-making in crisis situations
Interesting, and at times insightful into the nature of humankind’s engagement with crisis
Communication Ethics and Crisis offers a variety of methodological approaches for viewing ethical communication and/or crisis; for that, the collection has value for scholars of either or both.
Scholars looking for practical approaches to crisis communication will find material of interest here, as will those whose interests lie in the foundational theories governing out understanding of crises both material and philosophical
Groom and Fritz’s compilation contributes material both reflective and forward-looking to larger conversations about ethics and crisis response in a postmodern world; those engaged in such conversations would do well to take a look
— Rhetoric Review
[T]his collection offers readers a chance to negotiate different postmodernist approaches to understanding communication ethics and crisis.
— Journal of Media Ethics