Intersecting Borders: Power and Materiality in Rhetorical Ecologies

Abstract

Drawing on the work of philosophers, rhetoricians, political scientists, and sociologists, this theses integrates Boudieuian notions of capital into ecological theories of rhetoric as a means of providing a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which the capital of non-humans influences the way people act and react in the social world. By extending the theory of Latour, which gives agency to non-human actors, to include an analysis of the material capital possessed and manifested by those non-humans, the materiality of place is understood as creating sites of rhetorical invention and influencing how publics engage in the social world. The power structures initiated by materialized capital in the physical environment are then explained as reinforcing the sites of inclusion and exclusion that form among individuals and publics. The importance of conscious placemaking comes to the fore as places and the material world are conceptualized as at the center of argumentation, persuasion, and experience.