Voice and Environmental Communication

Voice and Environmental Communication explores how people give voice to, and listen to the voices of, the environment. As anxieties around degrading environments increase, so too do the number and volume of voices vying for the opportunity to express their experiences, beliefs, anxieties, knowledge and proposals for meaningful change. Nature itself speaks through, and perhaps to, individuals who advocate on behalf of the environment. This collection includes nine original essays organized into three sections: Voice and Environmental Advocacy, Voice and Consumption, and Listening to Non-human Voices. Four notable scholars reflect on these chapters, and provide both an audience to the scholars as well as a forum for extending their own understanding of voice and the environment. This foundational book introduces the relationship between these two fundamental aspects of human existence and extends our knowledge of the role of voice in the study of environmental communication.

Stephen Depoe is Professor and Head of the Department of Communication at the University of Cincinnati, USA. He was the founding editor of Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture and currently serves on the Editorial Board. He was also founder and first chair of the International Environmental Communication Association (http://theieca.org). His books include the co-edited volumes Nuclear Legacies: Communication, Controversy, and the U. S. Nuclear Weapons Complex (2007), and Communication and Public Participation in Environmental Decision Making (2004).

Jennifer Peeples is Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Utah State University, USA. Her area of research is environmental rhetoric with a focus on the persuasive strategies used to construct identity and place in community-level environmental disputes. She has examined the discourse and images of environmental protest and, most recently, the visual construction of toxicity. Professor Peeples is the Past-President of the Environmental Communication Division of the National Communication Association and serves on the editorial board of Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture and The Quarterly Journal of Speech. She has won a number of regional and national awards for her research, most notably The Golden Anniversary Monograph Award. Most recently, she won the 2012 Christine L. Oravec Research Award from the National Communication Association.

Introduction: Voice and the Environment—Critical Perspectives; Jennifer Peeples and Stephen Depoe
PART I: VOICE AND ENVIRONMENTAL ADVOCACY
1. Corporate Ventriloquism: Corporate Advocacy, the Coal Industry, and the Appropriation of Voice; Peter K. Bsumek, Jen Schneider, Steve Schwarze, Jennifer Peeples
2. Defending the Fort: Michael Crichton, Pulp Fiction, and Green Conspiracy; Patrick Belanger
3. Invoking the Ecological Indian: Rhetoric, Culture, and the Environment; Casey R. Schmitt
4. Sustainable Advocacy: Voice For and Before an Intergenerational Audience; Jessica M. Prody and Brandon Inabinet
5. RESPONSE ESSAY: The (Im)possibility of Voice in Environmental Advocacy; Danielle Endres
PART II: VOICE AND CONSUMPTION
6. Voices of Organic Consumption: Understanding Organic Consumption as Political Action; Leah Sprain
7. Vote With Your Fork: The Performance of Environmental Voice at the Farmers' Market; Benjamin Garner
8. RESPONSE ESSAY: Thinking through Issues of Voice and Consumption; Laura Lindenfeld
PART III: LISTENING TO NON-HUMAN VOICES
9. The Language that All Things Speak: Thoreau and the Voice of Nature; William Homestead
10. The Ethics of Listening in the Wilderness Writings of Sigurd F. Olson; David A. Tschida
11. Listening to the Natural World: Ecopsychology of Listening From a Hawai'ian Spiritual Perspective; Yukari Kunisue
12. RESPONSE ESSAY: Environmental Voices Including Dialogue with Nature, Within and Beyond Language; Donal Carbaugh
CODA: Food, Future, Zombies; Eric King Watts