Tuesday, October 19, 2010

The 11th Hour, and The Stases

The 11th Hour is a very powerful, and moving piece. Not only is this piece enlightening, but it also follows Jeanne Fahnestock and Marie Secor's basic stases model. The first question that this stases model answers is the question of fact; in other words, "What is it?" This question is answered throughout the film, but it is strongly mentioned in the beginning when the narrator, experts, and clips show how human society and humans' creations are destroying nature. The experts go into great detail about how if we destroy nature, we will also be destroyed. They do a very good job defining what is currently happening to our earth's climate.

The second stases question in Fahnestock and Secor's model is the question of fact, "How extensive is their use" (Fahnestock 429). This movie shows many facts about our earth. First off, they have evidence to back each one of their claims about the dissolving climate and of the increase in global warming. They tell these facts to the audience, but then they back them up with real life events; for instance, the ice caps are melting. They even show a chart that reflects the change in temperatures that we have witnessed during the last decade. Because these facts are visually seen, and backed up with much evidence, they can be seen as facts.

Next is the question of cause, "What brought them about or what is their history? or What are their effects?" (Fahnestock 429). The question of cause is answered from beginning to end in this movie. The experts, as well as the narrator, state how humans are using too many resources at the same time. This is the main cause for our climate decline. They say how we rely too much on oil and energy, which is causing pollution to be outrageous. Another cause of this problem is the pollution that is going into the ocean. This waste is wrecking our ocean and killing sea life.

The forth stasis is evaluation, "Are they a good or bad policy?" (Fahnestock 429). The answer to this is obvious from the beginning of this movie--no, what is going on now in our world is not a good thing. The pollution is killing our wildlife, and putting all nature at risk. Throughout the whole film, the experts are attempting to sway human beings against doing the things that they are doing, and trying to make the environment more green. They evaluate this issue by showing the negative aspects of the pollution and global warming. One very vivid negative that they mention is the increase in childhood diseases and cancers. The reason this is so vivid is because after mentioning it, we see clips of sick children. This is a very powerful scene that clearly shows that the evaluation of this issue is not good.

The last stasis level question is the proposal, "Should they be continued, expanded, reduced, eliminated?" (Fahnestock 429). The last bit of the movie is really just proposals of what we could do better as a society. They propose many solutions like transferring away from oil use, become a reuse economy, and begin using more energy from the sun. As they said in the movie, there is enough energy in the sun to fuel everything on earth more than once. This definitely seems to be a plausible solution to our problem. The experts also propose the we begin shifting the way we act, and let us know that we do have a choice in our actions.

As Fahnestock and Secor say, "Another way to look at the stases is to see them as sitting between the general outline of an argument, applicable to all arguments regardless of field" (Fahnestock 429). This statements seems to be very true. In their article,"The Stases in Scientific and Literary Argument," they seem to be talking about writing arguments, but their stases level questions work wonders for a spoken argument as well.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Extra Blogging Activity

Question 1:

One conflict that I have had within the passed year has been about the war that we are currently in with the middle east. My husband and I have differing views on this subject. I admire each and every soldier that has been, are, and will be over seas serving our country--it is definitely a very brave a noble deed. I also believe that we have done quite a lot of good things over there that benefit the locals in Iraq and Afghanistan. The news doesn't give us all of the positive information, it tends to focus on the negative things that go on there. However, I don't feel that our soldiers should still be in either place of war. I understand that we cannot just let them go home right away, it has to be done gradually--I just feel it should have been done already.

My husband, on the other hand, believes that we should stay over there until our job is done in both areas. We have had war debates a few times, but they never come to a clear conclusion. I would say that we have a level three conflict. We both give weight to different issues. He is in the military, and just came back in July from a year deployment in Afghanistan, so he obviously has personal experience to weigh in on his decisions. I think I put the weight on how our economy is, and how we need to  be concentrating on making it better. Although, we don't come to a clear conclusion, we both understand and accept one another's opinions--in fact, we decided before he actually left for deployment not to have this type of discussions.

Question 2:

The analogy, "Sproul Hall is to student rights as Mississippi is to civil rights" relates to Mario Savio's allusion, "in the world, but not of the world" in an interesting way that helps to prove one of his claims. The analogy is saying how Sproul Hall claims to have student rights, but students still lack things like the right to free speech, and the right to speak directly to higher administration. Mississippi claims to have civil rights, but there are still discriminatory acts.

The allusion mentioned above relates to the concept of this analogy. We see this relation when we think of the interpretation of the analogy. In other words, like free speech, student rights, and civil rights can be in the world, but they can not define it. This goes along with Savio's claim that the bureaucrats feel history has ended, and feel no new changes can truly be made to society. By stating this analogy and allusion, Savio is showing how the bureaucrats feel that these changes can be in the world, but they won't change in 'their world'--they will disregard these new changes.

Question 4:

While reading Robert Bullard's article, we can see how he is writing in the stasis of cause. As Fahnestock and Secor state this stasis answers the questions, "What brought them about, and what is their history?" and "What are their effects? (429). This seems to be the best way to write this article because it steers the article away from being completely polarized. He does mention some fact about the disaster, but he stays away from value and procedure. By doing this, he cannot be accused of taking a clear side either way. He wants the reader to decide what they should do about the racial situation.

Ida B. Well-Barnett and Mario Savio make this same strategy work in the same way as Bullard. They also write mostly in the stasis of cause. They are both trying to get the readers to stop something (lynching and bureaucracy), but they do it in a way that does not polarize the text. This is a great strategy that seems to cause more readers to read and understand the texts.

Friday, October 8, 2010

Seeing David S. Kaufer's Level 5 Conflict

David S. Kaufer makes some very valid recommendations in his method on how to write an argument on public policy in his article "A Plan for Teaching the Development of Original Policy Arguments." I believe that his method is very informative, and it does make the student think when developing their arguments. It also creates a strong foundation for one to prove their point on almost any argument. However, it seems that his whole method cannot be followed in every case. We see a particular instance of this in S. Andrew Ostapski, L. Wayne Plumly, and J.L. Love's article, "The Ethical and Economic Implications of Smoking in Enclosed Public Facilities: A Resolution of Conflicting Rights."

First of all, Kaufer believes that we should use stock issues when writing our arguments; "Stock issues are points of disagreement that recur regularly when people deliberate on questions of justice or public policy" (Kaufer 57). This is one aspect of Kaufer's method that Ostapski's article does follow. The three authors chose a very controversial topic--public smoking. Should public smoking be banned? Should it be segregated? We see how this is a stock issue from the very beginning when the authors describe the background and why this is a controversy, "passive inhalation [of smoking] has contributed to the declining health of non-users, who are exposed to this product" (Ostapski 377). Kaufer feels that while arguing for your stock issue, you should choose one of his sources or levels of conflict, "It is useful to think of these five sources of conflict in hierarchical terms, as "levels" of conflict that become more encompassing (harder to resolve) as one proceeds from level 1 to 5" (Kaufer 58). We see the development of the argument during the background information, and when they speak about the intervention, which includes whether or not smoking should be completely banned in public spaces.

Another step of Kaufer's method that the ethical article follows is how the student or writer should be able to see and understand both sides of the article, "At this point students have familiarized themselves with the adversaries' conflicting reasons for arguing one way or another" (Kaufer 60). Both sides of smoking is seen in many cases throughout this article, they tell how advocates that would like to ban or restrict smoking in enclosed areas feel "that it is needed to prevent the harmful health effects of passive cigarette smoke. Smokers insist that smoking is no different from other lifestyle choices of varying risks, which should be a matter of personal choice" (Ostapski 378). This quote, along with many others show how both smokers and non-smokers feel about the issue at hand.

Although there are many similarities mentioned above between the article and Kaufer's method, there are also many differences. We begin seeing the differences during the competing analogies step. Kaufer feels that the students should use  "analogies to previous cases resolved in their favor" (Kaufer 62) to prove their argument. We do not really see competing analogies in the ethical article. I believe this is due to Kaufer's level of conflict scale. At least as of 1997, when this article was written, there was no concrete solution to the problem, which would cause this article to be beyond a level four conflict.

As said, I believe that the conflict of the ethical article goes beyond Kaufer's level four, but I don't feel that it goes all the way to a level five. At this time, there is not a conclusion that can be drawn due to the conflicting views on local values. This 'local values' statement is why this argument does not qualify as a complete level 5 conflict--level five involves "global values." Even though, this is a small difference, I would give this conflict level a 4.5, with conflict in local values, and no solution.

Lastly, Kaufer believes that after finding competing analogies, one should find their resolution to the conflict at hand. Although, the authors of the smoking article cannot do this due to the conflict level, they do draw on some solutions that they feel would be useful. These particular solutions are drawn from examples of an indoor sports facility. One solution they draw is that "Lower-deck seating could be classified as non-smoking and upper-deck seating could be designated smoking areas" (Ostapski 383).

As seen throughout this whole comparison, there are times when Kaufer's method cannot be used. We also see that there are conflict levels seen between the levels that he gives us. These things are definitely worth thinking of when constructing public policy arguments.

Kaufer, David S. "A Plan for Teaching the development of Original Policy Arguments." College Composition and Communication 35.1 (Feb 1984): 57-70

Ostapski, S. Andrew, Plumly, L. Wayne, Love, J.L. "The Ethical and Economic Implications of Smoking in Enclosed Public Facilities: A Resolution of Conflicting Rights. Journal of Business Ethics Vol. 16. No 4. (Mar 1997). 377-384.