{"id":283,"date":"2008-10-24T03:07:54","date_gmt":"2008-10-24T08:07:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/?p=283"},"modified":"2008-10-24T11:47:42","modified_gmt":"2008-10-24T16:47:42","slug":"im-not-into-politics-communicating-civic-value-to-the-apolitical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/2008\/10\/24\/im-not-into-politics-communicating-civic-value-to-the-apolitical\/","title":{"rendered":"“I’m Not into Politics”: Communicating Civic Value to the Apolitical"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n

One question has been driving much of my thinking lately: what is the best way to communicate the value of \u201cpolitics\u201d to people who consider themselves apolitical? What do you say to people that argue, often very casually, \u201cI\u2019m not really into politics.\u201d I\u2019ve found that many students who are hoping to enter seemingly non-political careers such as business, media, entertainment etc., for example, think that \u201cpolitics\u201d is a phenomenon that is very distant from their lives and interests\u2014something that goes on in the faraway, bureaucratic world of Washington, DC, but bears little connection to their personal and professional career trajectories.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to open up a space for public inquiry here\u2014what have you done to communicate the value of politics to others who consider themselves apolitical?<\/p>\n

In my own dealings with this quandary, I\u2019ve found it best to bring politics down to the level of \u201ceverydayness\u201d as much as possible, communicating to apolitical others how buying a t-shirt, a cup of tea, or even their favorite album can all be political acts\u2014supporting whole systems of equality or inequality that are hidden from us in our everyday doings (and per Kenneth Burke\u2019s wonderful aphorism that \u201cevery construct is a destruct\u201d). I try to talk about \u201cpower\u201d as much as possible, particularly how \u201cpower\u201d is who gets to speak in society\u2014which means that we are all implicated in influencing or being influenced by forces which help or hinder both ourselves and others in everyday life. I try to raise (following Henry Jenkin\u2019s findings on promoting civic engagement among youth) issues that are \u201cimmediate\u201d and \u201cinvolving\u201d for the person I\u2019m talking to\u2014have they had any trouble with healthcare lately, or potholes in the road, what about noisy neighbors?\u2014these all bring up civic issues that relate to our everyday lives. There are many more examples, but what I most try to do is expand the definition of \u201cpolitics\u201d for people so that they can start seeing the political in the seemingly \u201cnonpolitical\u201d (in Barry Brummett\u2019s terms\u2014perhaps talking about how race is politically negotiated in Wayans Brothers films or two white teenagers in the suburbs listening to Eminem\u2014in moment to moment acts of negotiating meaning that wield influence for ourselves and others). Per one of my favorite theorists, Stanley Deetz, I try to also communicate how all information is political and sponsored, even the front of a \u201cTrix\u201d cereal box is political in occluding its means of production and sheer coma-inducing sugar content (not to mention its fostering of childhood obesity). As Deetz and others such as Stuart Hall have argued, the sanitized, supposedly neutral word \u201cinformation\u201d hides political dynamics in social life\u2014that is, \u201cinformation\u201d really puts us \u201cin-formation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paradoxically both simple and difficult to answer, this is, I believe, an enduring interdisciplinary question that we all have a significant stake in. Think of the number of vital political issues (e.g. civil rights, human rights, health rights etc.) that might be left unaddressed by future generations who think politics is \u201cout there\u201d rather than \u201cright here.\u201d We should do everything within our power to find novel ways to communicate and translate the value of politics to others who consider themselves apolitical. What means\/methods have you used for communicating the value of politics to others who think they are apolitical? \u2013Don Waisanen<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One question has been driving much of my thinking lately: what is the best way to communicate the value of \u201cpolitics\u201d to people who consider themselves apolitical? What do you say to people that argue, often very casually, \u201cI\u2019m not really into politics.\u201d I\u2019ve found that many students who are hoping to enter seemingly non-political […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/138"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":287,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283\/revisions\/287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}