Breaking Boundaries
Innovative Practices in Environmental Communication and Public Participation
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Analyzes efforts made by communities and policy makers around the world to push beyond conventional approaches to environmental decision making.
Description
Breaking Boundaries analyzes efforts made by communities and policy makers around the world to push beyond conventional approaches to environmental decision making to enhance public acceptance, sustainability, and the impact of those decisions in local contexts. The current political climate has generated uncertainty among citizens, industry interests, scientists, and other stakeholders, but by applying concepts from various perspectives of environmental communication and deliberative democracy, this book offers a series of lessons learned for both public officials and concerned citizens. The contributors offer a broader understanding of how individuals and groups can get involved effectively in environmental decisions through traditional formats as well as alternative approaches ranging from leadership capacity building to social media activity to civic technology.
Kathleen P. Hunt is Assistant Professor of Communication at the State University of New York at New Paltz. Gregg B. Walker is Professor of Communication at Oregon State University. He is the coauthor of Working through Environmental Conflict: The Collaborative Learning Approach (with Stephen E. Daniels) and The Military-Industrial Complex: Eisenhower's Warning Three Decades Later (with Steven J. Sprecher and David A. Bella). Stephen P. Depoe is Professor of Communication at the University of Cincinnati. He is the coeditor of several books, including Communication and Public Participation in Environmental Decision Making (with John W. Delicath and Marie-France Aepli Elsenbeer), also published by SUNY Press.
Reviews
"The book's premise—of acknowledging how historic modes of communication are at loggerheads with the issues we are facing—is important, especially as issues like climate change become even more complex, raising key questions about where and how public participation takes place. More important, the book raises questions about why public participation is still relevant, needed even, regardless of shifts in communicative technologies." — H-Net Reviews (H-Environment)
"Breaking Boundaries is an enlightening collection … Academics studying environmental communication and/or public policy would do well to have this volume on their shelves." — Technical Communication