Contested Realities and Identity Destigmatization
About this book
Much scholarship has sought to decode the polarization of American culture. Analyzing public discourse on contested realities (immigration, vaccines, electric vehicles, transgender youth medicine, campus protests of Israel, the regulation of AR-15s, and race and police brutality) reveals that Americans are not governed by coherent, diametrically opposed worldviews. U.S. culture is more fractured than dominant narratives of a polarized society would suggest. Moreover, these cultural disputes result in the generation of materials for constructing identities. Disagreement over how to define reality inevitably leads to a contest over the authority and moral worthiness of the individuals involved in the dispute. Contested Realities and Identity Destigmatization analyzes how participants in public discourse stigmatize but also destigmatize their adversaries. This study not only demonstrates that there are people who are seeking to "turn down the temperature" in public discourse but the generic processes by which they do so.
- Takes an apolitical approach to several cases of contested reality
- Facilitates greater empathy and understanding of the cultural landscape
- Demonstrates the processes through which actors stigmatize but also destigmatize their adversaries
Author / Editor information
Eric O. Silva is Professor of Sociology at Georgia Southern University. His research examines how reality is constructed in contested situations.
Topics
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