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Technical Communication After the Social Justice Turn

Building Coalitions for Action

Rebecca Walton author Natasha Jones author Kristen Moore author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd

Published:3rd Jun '19

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Technical Communication After the Social Justice Turn cover

This book marks the social justice turn in technical and professional communication (TPC). Social justice often draws attention to structural oppression, but to enact social justice as technical communicators, first, we must be able to trace daily practice to the oppressive structures it professionalizes, codifies, and normalizes. Technical Communication After the Social Justice Turn moves readers from conceptual explorations of oppression and justice to a theoretical framework that allows for the concepts to be applied and implemented in a variety of practical contexts. It historicizes the recent social justice turn in TPC scholarship, models a social justice approach to building theories and heuristics, and presents scenarios that illustrate how to develop sustainable practices of activism and social justice. Its commitment to coalition building, inclusivity, and socially just practices of citation and activism will support scholars, teachers, and practitioners not only in understanding how the work of technical communication is often complicit in oppression but also in recognizing, revealing, rejecting, and replacing oppressive practices.

"This book opens vital conversations and makes fascinating theoretical interventions into the 'social justice turn' in technical communication. Anyone in this field with more than a fleeting commitment to social justice must carefully consider Walton, Moore, and Jones’ insights on intersectionality, coalition, power, and privilege."

-Karma R. Chávez, University of Texas at Austin, USA


This book opens vital conversations and makes fascinating theoretical interventions into the "social justice turn" in technical communication. Anyone in this field with more than a fleeting commitment to social justice, must carefully consider Walton, Moore, and Jones’ insights on intersectionality, coalition, power, and privilege.

Karma R. Chávez, University of Texas at Austin, USA

Beyond galvanizing the field to more fully embrace the social justice turn, this book accessibly synthesizes, creatively extends, and powerfully demonstrates this turn, offering scholars, teachers, students, and practitioners a valuable sourcebook of concepts and theories, methodologies, examples, and heuristics. Like its authors, this book is fierce in insisting that we account for and collectively redress the ways that we are complicit in the positionality privilege, and power ("3Ps") that shape forms of oppression, while also being generous in the resources and encouragement it provides to do such work.

J. Blake Scott, University of Central Florida, USA

ISBN: 9780367188467

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 540g

182 pages