Browsing by Subject "Local"
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Item Mitigation of rhetorical tension in emergency planning communication(Texas Tech University, 2008-08) Youngblood, Susan A.; Baake, Ken; Carter, Joyce L.; Koerber, AmyLocal Emergency Planning Committees (LEPCs) are nexuses of community stakeholders and, as such, represent the diverse interests and concerns of their communities regarding preventing and planning for emergencies. These organizations are required to establish procedures for giving the public access to information about hazardous chemicals in their regions, specifically Tier II chemical reports. However, this task is complicated by the rhetorical tension that exists between the two types of risk with which LEPCs contend: the risk of chemical accidents (which seems to call for making information accessible to the public) and the risk of sabotage (which seems to call for limiting public access to information). This applied ethnographic study of two Texas LEPCs addresses the following questions. First, how do LEPCs mitigate this tension to communicate with the public? Second, what roles do structural flexibility and ambiguity in communication play in LEPCs? This study spanned over two years and includes an analysis of the following: the texts that guide LEPCs (the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, or EPCRA; EPA documents; and LEPC bylaws), the texts created by the participating LEPCs (including emails, public education materials, and Web sites), the organizational structures of these LEPCs, interviews of members, and the members’ oral discourse. The EPCRA statute that mandates LEPCs has ambiguity that allows flexibility in LEPC organizational structure. This flexibility lets LEPCs structure themselves according to their communities’ exigencies and the specialties of members. The flexibility within the bylaws allows active LEPC subcommittees to assume duties that other subcommittees are dropping. Most significantly, the Web sites and the members’ discourse reveals that LEPCs use ambiguity in their writing, often strategically, to mitigate the tension between the two types of risks, communicating the public’s right to access Tier II information but dissuading potential saboteurs from requesting this information. Furthermore, one of the participating LEPCs uses ambiguity to promote membership. The use of ambiguity can be ethical, but ambiguity—particularly in the form of uncontextualized terms—can obfuscate the public’s understanding of its rights, even when LEPCs have the right-to-know information on their Web sites.Item Offense at your door : Roman Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses, judicial review, and Cantwell v. Connecticut, 1938-1940(2014-05) Batlan, Katharine M.; Graber, Jennifer, 1973-; Tweed, Thomas ACantwell v. Connecticut (1940) marked a new moment in religious liberties in the United States. In this case the Supreme Court nationalized free exercise of religion. While many legal scholars point to this case as important for precedents used in the arguments of subsequent cases, the context from which this case emerged was also important. I argue that Cantwell should also be studied for what it can tell us about religious conflict at the time. In Cantwell the Supreme Court of the United States incorporated the free exercise of religion to states, but in doing so it obscured the real religious tensions between Roman Catholics and Jehovah's Witnesses and local efforts to adjudicate those conflicts.Item Tango with the global, national, and local : new multi-functional organizations in the Chinese independent documentary ecosystem(2011-08) Yang, Jing; Schatz, Thomas, 1948-; Chang, Sung-sheng, 1951-Compared to the early days of China’s New Documentary Movement in the 1990s, Chinese independent documentary in the past decade has become more diverse in topic and style, thanks to technologies such as digital video cameras and the internet. Independent documentaries capture a fast-changing China in progress, and have thus drawn scholarly attention from cultural or social studies perspectives. However, industrial development in the past decade has often been neglected in favor of textual analysis of films. Since the marketization of independent documentaries in the 1990s was mainly through international film festivals, and a domestic industry has been lacking, it is easy to assume that Chinese independent documentarians today still have to follow the same path as their counterparts in the 1990s. However, my research on the Chinese independent documentary scene in Beijing in 2009 showed me a picture of a burgeoning domestic industry for independent documentaries, with a handful of newly emerged multi-functional independent film organizations practicing production, distribution and exhibition. Since a real industry has not yet formed, I use “ecosystem” instead of “industry” in the context of Chinese independent documentary. This study compares three representative organizations which are different from each other in nature and emphases, from their birth and evolution to their work and strategies. I argue that these organizations have created new possibilities and opportunities for today’s Chinese independent documentaries, through their different strategies in balancing themselves in a three-legged system of the global, national and local forces and resources.