Activist Rhetorics and the Struggle for Meaning: The Case of "Sustainability" in the Reticulate Public Sphere

Abstract

Mainstream and movement rhetorics interact as political actors and struggle to control meaning in ways that are not evident from single-site analysis. This article examines how three speakers in southern Arizona give meaning to "sustainable ranching." The vir bonus is used to understand meanings developed in face-to-face deliberative forums. Social movement framing theory, briefly reviewed, is used to analyze activist rhetoric and limits of the vir bonus model. Finally, Gerard Hauser's "reticulate public sphere" is used to account for invention as a dialogic response to rhetorics from multiple sites.