Rather than offering their definition of ecology, Rivers and Weber synthesize the work of Richard Coe, Marilyn Cooper, Margaret Syverson, Jenny Edbauer, Warner, and Christine M. Tardy:
Cooper
- “the writer exists within a larger world of dynamic, interrelated, socially constructed systems that are in constant flux” (192)
- “Cooper’s emplacement of writing in the social world is, then, a robust understanding for” students engaging in public rhetorics (192)
Syverson
- “writers, readers, and texts form just such a complex system of self-organizing, adaptive, and dynamic interactions” (192).
- “Rhetorical ecologies ‘involve social but also environmental structures that both powerfully constrain and also enable what writers are able to think, feel, and write’” (190)
- “ecologies contain institutions, and institutions are themselves ecological” (193)
- “an ‘ecological approach…considers the dynamics of systems of people situated in and codetermining particular social and material environments’” (196)
Edbauer
- “The concept of rhetorical ecology emphasizes the symbiotic nature of texts, including the ways texts, events, and feelings influence or ‘contaminate’ one another” (193)
- “all rhetorics are inherently infected by others rhetorics. Rhetorics exist in the fluid movement of texts, within in turn spawn counter-rhetorics” (194)
- “even the most carefully coordinated advocacy cannot control or dictate the uses of its texts because further rhetorical action is always ‘changing and expanding their shape’” (201)
Warner
- “publics emerge in the relationship across texts and not just in the relationship between a single text and its immediate audience” (194)
Tardy
- “Working in and on institutions involves producing multiple and often mundane texts that enact concrete and locally specific changes in institutional practices” (195). Tardy, for instance, lists: goals, handbooks, meetings, assessment rubrics, and common assignments” (195).
After synthesizing these works, Rivers and Weber explain the ecologies around the Montgomery Bus Boycott, emphasizing that highlighted acts like Rosa Parks refusing to move and MLK Jr.’s speeches were not discrete acts instead, they were supported by an ecology that enabled the acts to become important (197). They write, “An ecological anthology covering the movement would reprint familiar texts like letters and speeches alongside multiple, mundane texts like newsletters, internal memos, proposals, strategy documents, images of protests and the spaces, such as buses and diners, that shaped and were shaped by rhetorical activity” (196). Finally, the authors explain how they have brought rhetorical ecologies into their classrooms.
So, ecologies:
- are complex systems with multiple texts, audiences, and actors
- include social, environmental, emotions and material structures. (This is important because they highlight the importance of physical spaces and affective responses within the ecology. Many other authors do not consider these spaces and/or responses.)
- are always changing
- are self-organizing, adaptive, and dynamic
- influence and are influence by other ecologies (The issue, though, is that the boundaries between ecologies are not easily drawn so I don’t know the extent to which we can identify when one ecology affects another.)
- spawn counter-ecologies
- are influenced, but not controlled by the elements within the ecology