Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: As constructivists and other advocates of constitutive theories have often noted, the natural world is very different from the social one. Our ideas about the social world not only reflect that world, but help shape and create it; we are part of the reality we try to describe and explain, not external to it, and we therefore have the potential to alter the reality a theory is merely intended to describe or explain. Our theories about the social world may thus become self-fulfilling prophecies or autogenetic in character. And yet while constructivists often make this point in epistemological debate, there have been relatively few attempts so far to address its empirical implications. With that objective in mind, this paper examines three prominent IR theories – the democratic peace theory, the interdependence equals peace thesis and the ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis – arguing that each has a self-fulfilling character rather than being true or false in any objective or timeless sense; each is, to paraphrase the now time-honored expression, what the relevant actors make of it. The paper also probes the processes by which theories become self-generating, stressing the role of opinion entrepreneurs in fashioning explanatory and predictive theories which become popularized – usually because they seem to fit the nature of the times in some way - so that people begin to believe that a theory explains reality in a naturalistic sense and that its predictions are therefore bound to hold.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Scholarly literature examining the impact of the Internet on public relations suggests that dialogic communication is one of the more important theoretical constructs in public relations, especially in webbed communication (Ryan, 2003). A decade ago, using the dialogic theory of public relations as the theoretical framework, Kent and Taylor (1998, 2002) provided a strategic framework to facilitate relationship with publics though the World Wide Web. Based on a review of research exploring Web-based public relations practices drawing on Kent and Taylor’s theoretical framework, this essay offers a ten-year reflective survey on past, current, and future directions of Kent and Taylor’s Internet principles, as they relate to the dialogic theory of public relations.

Publication Type: Invited Paper
Abstract: Barack Obama has been widely praised by rhetorical theorists, political commentators, and ordinary citizens for his use of value-laden rhetorical strategies and narratives tied to the American Dream to create an inclusive political perspective. What has not been recognized previously, however, is that in creating this value-laden narrative, Obama transforms a rhetorical approach that in formal terms is epideictic in nature into a call for fundamental policy change, a functionally deliberative perspective.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Since the early twentieth century, shortly after the engineering-based process of voluntary consensus standard setting was invented, sociA century ago, shortly after the engineering-based process of voluntary consensus standard setting was invented, analysts from across the political spectrum speculated that this mechanism for establishing industrial standards might be extended to the development of effective social regulation. Today, the International Organization for Standardization’s comprehensive social responsibility standard (ISO 26000) is being created through that mechanism. A comparative historical investigation of this standard and the negotiations leading to it suggests that ISO 26000 may have greater impact than other attempts, both public and private, over the past 30 years to create broad codes of conduct for firms operating in an increasingly transnational economy. Although the ISO standard is neither compulsory (something that many non-governmental organizations [NGOs] believe is essential) nor does it entail a monitoring system (something desired by many NGOs and characteristic of the earlier ISO standards on which 26000 is based), it has some unique advantages. This paper places the standard in its historical context. A second paper, to be presented in October 2009, will outline those advantages and consider the standard’s likely future.

Publication Type: Individual Presentation
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: By virtue of the sheer presence of Africans in America their humanity has continued to create the world anew. The mission of Africana Studies in America has been to systematically engage in this process by understanding and initiating social change that transforms oppressive sociopolitical and economic structures towards the liberation of people of African descent, specifically, and our broader humanity more generally. This paper will describe how that social change mission has been realized over the past 40 years and proposes that not enough attention has been given by the field to more proactive efforts that have direct and positive impact on communities of African people. Considerable social change methods and strategies exist but need to be more fully incorporated into how we define Africana Studies and how we prepare change agents to take on these tasks.