This paper reports the preliminary results of a content analysis of the use and functions of reas... more This paper reports the preliminary results of a content analysis of the use and functions of reasonableness in the New York Times editorial page from 1860-2004. We begin by setting out several reasons why we should devote our critical attention to the concept of reasonableness. We then justify our choice of the New York Times editorial page and describe our sample and analytic method. The body of the paper reports three results. First, the primary meanings of the concept are detailed. These include prudence, rationality, fairness, and appropriateness. Second, a distinction between an epistemic and a non-epistemic function of the concept was found in both the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data. Moreover, we found that the vast majority of the editorials employ the non-epistemic function--a fact that we argue has significant consequences for argumentation theory. Finally, we found that the topoi of reasonableness primarily concern the legitimacy of applications of socia...
A content analysis of the New York Times editorial page shows that political reasonableness can b... more A content analysis of the New York Times editorial page shows that political reasonableness can be defined in several, sometimes competing, ways. These meanings can be summarized as prudence, soundness, equity and social cooperation. At the heart of many of the extended political controversies the Times editorial page has commented on disputes over which of these definitions of political reasonableness should prevail. One of these controversies concerned Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s 1959 proposal for complete nuclear disarmament; a proposal that presented several argumentative dilemmas for US President Dwight Eisenhower’s administration. The public debate over Khrushchev’s proposal occurred largely on the editorial page of the New York Times. The Times offered its own assessments of the proposal and served as a platform for publicizing the Eisenhower’s administrations’ concerns and counterarguments. A rhetorical analysis of these editorials reveals how the meaning of political reasonableness itself became the object of strategic maneuvering in the Cold War. In particular, the higher-order conditions of argumentation, namely the ethical and political commitments underwriting reasonableness, served as the locus of strategic maneuvering in the editorial argumentation of the New York Times.
This paper is an attempt to reconcile the gap between our practical and theoretical knowledge. Th... more This paper is an attempt to reconcile the gap between our practical and theoretical knowledge. The authors begin by briefly describing and critiquing the traditional conceptualiza- tions of democratic disagreement: conflicts of interest and conflicts of principle. They then propose that the dilemmas in democratic practice engendered by intercultural contact necessitate a new conceptualization of democratic disagreement that can account for discursive plurality. This account of democratic disagreement - which the authors term "conflicts over political speech" - demands that we turn our attention towards exploring how cultural identities are enacted and negotiated through plural discursive systems. The authors conclude by discussing the implications of these assumptions, as well as interrogating our own received presuppositions about the interface between cultural identity and political participation, for constructing a transformative model of public democratic dialogue. Whe...
Essays in the The Prettier Doll focus on the same local controversy: in 2001, a third-grade girl ... more Essays in the The Prettier Doll focus on the same local controversy: in 2001, a third-grade girl in Colorado submitted an experiment to the school science fair. She asked 30 adults and 30 fifth-graders which of two Barbie dolls was prettier. One doll was black, the other white, and each wore a different colored dress. All of the adults picked the Barbie in the purple dress, while nearly all of the fifth graders picked the white Barbie. When the student's experiment was banned an uproar resulted that spread to the national media. School ...
Increasingly, innovative collaborative partnerships are adopted in setting that distributed organ... more Increasingly, innovative collaborative partnerships are adopted in setting that distributed organizations, groups, and individuals work together toward solving problems or projects that are too big or complex for single investigators. We look at how the growth process, a largely overlooked aspect of collaboration affects stakeholders’ expectation of each other’s contribution to a civic program and subsequently influences collaboration outcomes. Based on experimental economics and complexity theory, strategic behaviors of stakeholders in collaborations are formalized as a minimum-effort coordination game with Pareto ranked equilibria. We implement the minimum-effort coordination game in a multi-agent simulation. A series of simulated experiments are conducted to gain a fine-grained understanding of how the growth process can engender and reinforce positive expectation among stakeholders, minimize uncertainty, and aid the coordination of stakeholders’ behaviors in collaborative partne...
This essay advances the proposition that the quality of the collaborative process can exercise co... more This essay advances the proposition that the quality of the collaborative process can exercise considerable influence on the success and sustainability of community initiatives, especially those addressing community health and wellbeing. The force and direction of this influence, the essay argues, is largely accounted for by stakeholders’ perceptions of their collective power and whether the collaborative process feels authentic. Further, this influence can last for many years, flowing downstream from stakeholders participating in early stages of the collaborative process to those giving and receiving care. The essay offers a phenomenological account of collaboration – as animated by the flow and force of affective energy – to address several critical questions: what motivates collaboration; what sustains group cohesion; what are the features of high-quality collaborative processes; and what makes a collaborative process authentic? The essay concludes with an affective re-specificat...
This paper reports the preliminary results of a content analysis of the use and functions of reas... more This paper reports the preliminary results of a content analysis of the use and functions of reasonableness in the New York Times editorial page from 1860-2004. We begin by setting out several reasons why we should devote our critical attention to the concept of reasonableness. We then justify our choice of the New York Times editorial page and describe our sample and analytic method. The body of the paper reports three results. First, the primary meanings of the concept are detailed. These include prudence, rationality, fairness, and appropriateness. Second, a distinction between an epistemic and a non-epistemic function of the concept was found in both the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data. Moreover, we found that the vast majority of the editorials employ the non-epistemic function--a fact that we argue has significant consequences for argumentation theory. Finally, we found that the topoi of reasonableness primarily concern the legitimacy of applications of socia...
A content analysis of the New York Times editorial page shows that political reasonableness can b... more A content analysis of the New York Times editorial page shows that political reasonableness can be defined in several, sometimes competing, ways. These meanings can be summarized as prudence, soundness, equity and social cooperation. At the heart of many of the extended political controversies the Times editorial page has commented on disputes over which of these definitions of political reasonableness should prevail. One of these controversies concerned Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s 1959 proposal for complete nuclear disarmament; a proposal that presented several argumentative dilemmas for US President Dwight Eisenhower’s administration. The public debate over Khrushchev’s proposal occurred largely on the editorial page of the New York Times. The Times offered its own assessments of the proposal and served as a platform for publicizing the Eisenhower’s administrations’ concerns and counterarguments. A rhetorical analysis of these editorials reveals how the meaning of political reasonableness itself became the object of strategic maneuvering in the Cold War. In particular, the higher-order conditions of argumentation, namely the ethical and political commitments underwriting reasonableness, served as the locus of strategic maneuvering in the editorial argumentation of the New York Times.
This paper is an attempt to reconcile the gap between our practical and theoretical knowledge. Th... more This paper is an attempt to reconcile the gap between our practical and theoretical knowledge. The authors begin by briefly describing and critiquing the traditional conceptualiza- tions of democratic disagreement: conflicts of interest and conflicts of principle. They then propose that the dilemmas in democratic practice engendered by intercultural contact necessitate a new conceptualization of democratic disagreement that can account for discursive plurality. This account of democratic disagreement - which the authors term "conflicts over political speech" - demands that we turn our attention towards exploring how cultural identities are enacted and negotiated through plural discursive systems. The authors conclude by discussing the implications of these assumptions, as well as interrogating our own received presuppositions about the interface between cultural identity and political participation, for constructing a transformative model of public democratic dialogue. Whe...
Essays in the The Prettier Doll focus on the same local controversy: in 2001, a third-grade girl ... more Essays in the The Prettier Doll focus on the same local controversy: in 2001, a third-grade girl in Colorado submitted an experiment to the school science fair. She asked 30 adults and 30 fifth-graders which of two Barbie dolls was prettier. One doll was black, the other white, and each wore a different colored dress. All of the adults picked the Barbie in the purple dress, while nearly all of the fifth graders picked the white Barbie. When the student's experiment was banned an uproar resulted that spread to the national media. School ...
Increasingly, innovative collaborative partnerships are adopted in setting that distributed organ... more Increasingly, innovative collaborative partnerships are adopted in setting that distributed organizations, groups, and individuals work together toward solving problems or projects that are too big or complex for single investigators. We look at how the growth process, a largely overlooked aspect of collaboration affects stakeholders’ expectation of each other’s contribution to a civic program and subsequently influences collaboration outcomes. Based on experimental economics and complexity theory, strategic behaviors of stakeholders in collaborations are formalized as a minimum-effort coordination game with Pareto ranked equilibria. We implement the minimum-effort coordination game in a multi-agent simulation. A series of simulated experiments are conducted to gain a fine-grained understanding of how the growth process can engender and reinforce positive expectation among stakeholders, minimize uncertainty, and aid the coordination of stakeholders’ behaviors in collaborative partne...
This essay advances the proposition that the quality of the collaborative process can exercise co... more This essay advances the proposition that the quality of the collaborative process can exercise considerable influence on the success and sustainability of community initiatives, especially those addressing community health and wellbeing. The force and direction of this influence, the essay argues, is largely accounted for by stakeholders’ perceptions of their collective power and whether the collaborative process feels authentic. Further, this influence can last for many years, flowing downstream from stakeholders participating in early stages of the collaborative process to those giving and receiving care. The essay offers a phenomenological account of collaboration – as animated by the flow and force of affective energy – to address several critical questions: what motivates collaboration; what sustains group cohesion; what are the features of high-quality collaborative processes; and what makes a collaborative process authentic? The essay concludes with an affective re-specificat...
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Papers by Darrin Hicks