The rhetoric of agitation and control

by John Bowers, Donovan J. Ochs

This insightful volume continues to provide readers with the basis for understanding the instrumental and symbolic acts underlying agitation and control. Scientific and humanistic methods of analysis have been combined to present the authors' original themes and to analyze case studies. Readers will assimilate a frame of reference that will sharpen their analytic skills and help them to specify the rhetorical ingredients used by agitators and establishments in their recipes for social change and social control.

Genres: Sociology

152 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1992

Reviews

[Mark Gring · Rating 3 out of 5]

I used this book in my graduate Summer II 2017 class on Propaganda. I read this years ago as an undergraduate student at the University of Texas-Austin. It is less interesting to read it a third + time these years later. The book was interesting as a first read, and continues to be valuable, because of Bowers and Ochs initial listing of strategies and tactics for agitation and for control. Much of this was based on the radical movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Many of these techniques have been so used/abused over the years that they have almost become passé to the casual observer. The introduction of the strategies and techniques of control, however, still continue to be a useful part of this text.
The book is designed for advanced undergraduates and/or early MA students and it is open to some critique. As one of my graduate students observed, the techniques of control introduced here seem to come from a system where those in control do not have much control. Another critique is the almost dictionary type listing of strategies and tactics, along with some interesting and always updated case studies, seem too pedantic when compared with books like Jacques Ellu's Propaganda or Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. Too little philosophical ideas with an applied bent and, now, too much of an attempted social science categorization tends to make this text less profound and more passé.

Despite the critiques, though, the ideas are still valuable introductions to students interested in mass movements, activism, propaganda, and persuasion/coercion on a mass scale.

[bel luu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Useful tool

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not particularly breath-taking, this collection of theoretical framework and case studies is very basic, but it does provide a useful vocabulary I can use to speak somewhat intelligently about dissent. At the very least, its framework is a foundation I can question and reevaluate.

[Autumn Shuler · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this up because it was required for a class, and I wasn't crazy about it. It had a lot of good information, but I found it hard to follow in a few different spots.