Rhetorical strategies and speaking rats

Like many others I believe that the mass media has a major influence on what the public perceive as important issues, like how they conceive of environmental problems for example. Greenpeace is given space in the Argentine newspapers with their spectacular events. The other day I saw a video with one of their campaigns on the newspaper Clarin’s website. The actors were dressed up as rats with furry suits and big teeth, as cockroaches and as flies. They were thanking Macri, the mayor of Buenos Aires, for all the extra garbage. The amount of garbage has been rising constantly, and this is a big issue for a city which has accepted a law called “Basura Cero”, zero garbage, with the number 1854. The garbage is a big issue in environmental terms here in Buenos Aires since it affects the public health and sanitation. Greenpeace claims that the government has failed to accomplish with the goals in the law, with an increase in tons of waste by 14.5% in 2008 compared to 2007, with a total of 1,884,460 tons.

The garbage is sent to the suburbs of Buenos Aires, the “courbano”, and with the new contracts that the private companies have made Greenpeace fears that the ambition to reduce the amount of garbage will not be fulfilled. What Greenpeace then suggests is to form educational campaigns to get people to sort their waste at the source, that is, at home. The garbage which is sent to land filling sites contains toxic substances which will harm water and land of the communities that live close to the land filling sites.

I must say that I am impressed by the PR that Greenpeace works with. Even if some campaigns, like the U.S. Greenpeace commercial where they uses digitally altered footage of the deceased President J.F. Kennedy stating that we need an “energy (r)evolution” to deal with the dangers of global warming, have been severely criticized. However, even if it is possible to agree that environmental organizations perhaps have to adhere to the “truth” and that there is a risk that they gain more criticism than support by employing such a strategy, it is also important to discuss the means and the ends with campaigns like these. Therefore I want to return to Pezzullo who talks about “critical interruptions” (2001) as a “rhetorical strategy” (Depoe & Delicath 2004:7) in environmental justice movements, where the issue of how to raise awareness and political will for the environment is central.

In another article, which is part of an important book that deals with cultural activism called Communication and Public Participation in Environmental Decision Making (2004) Pezzullo brings in the method to organize “negative sightseeing”. As the title indicates the book concerns different forms of public participation, and communication theories are used to discuss the issues. Traditionally public participation operates on a technocratic model of rationality, occurs too late in the decision-making process, or lacks forums for informed dialogue (Depoe & Delicath 2004:2-3). To improve public participation, the authors argue and I completely agree, we have to pay adequate attention to issues of communication. Environmental communication is an emerging research tradition, which explores “strategic symbolic action” (2004:4). “Participants in environmental decision making utilize strategic communication in efforts to set agendas, define problems, and advocate solutions, as well as to cultivate trust.” (ibid:4). Further, as the authors state that Fischer and Forester managed to point out, public participation in environmental decision making is a “constant discursive struggle over the criteria of social classification, the boundaries of problem categories, the intersubjective interpretation of common experiences, the conceptual framing of problems, and the shared meanings which motivate them to act” (1993:1-2 cited in Depoe & Delicath 2004:4-5).

“In addition to writings, speeches, paintings, photographs, and protests, tours have provided a compelling medium of persuasion for environmentalists” Pezzullo writes (2004:235). In her article “Toxic Tours: Communicating the ‘Presence’ of Chemical Contamination” (2004) Pezzullo discusses the use of guided journeys to learn about specific places and their environmental state. What she calls “toxic tours” has the capacity to be a mode of communication, and can be a form of environmental advocacy through the possibility to make the toxicity “present”. It is also (most probably) an experience of something different from ones everyday life, which can serve as a transformative experience. This implies a quest to stimulate a sense of agency among the tour goers that may result in action. Presence in this case “describes when an argument becomes relevant or meaningful to its audience” (Pezzullo 2004:245). It is further through the “ways in which tourists are guided through these spaces physically and orally that make toxic tours matter” (ibid:247).

In his article “Art and Advocacy: citizen participation through cultural activism” in the mentioned anthology John Delicath (2004) explores the role that cultural activism and photography play in environmental justice struggles. He argues that theorists that deal with participation have to consider the issues of what motivates, inspires, prepares, and empowers the public to participate in environmental decision making. He looks specifically at the role cultural activism plays.

So, from these analytical contributions it is possible to examine the workings of Greenpeace in Argentina. Even if it would be rewarding to compare the activities and campaigns that the international NGO carries out, that is beyond the scope of this present study, and it is only possible to attempt to connect their campaigns to the current political context. In a country where the trust in politicians is very low it is interesting to notice how they blame a specific actor – the mayor Macri.

References:
Depoe, Stephen & John W. Delicath (eds.) (2004) Communication and Public Participation in Environmental Decision Making. State University of New York Press.

Delicath, John (2004) “Art and Advocacy: citizen participation through cultural activism” in Communication and Public Participation in Environmental Decision Making. State University of New York Press.

Pezzullo, Phaedra (2001) “Performing Critical Interruptions: Stories, Rhetorical Intervention, and the Environmental Justice Movement”, Western Journal of Communication 65(1), pp 1-25.

Pezzullo, Phaedra (2004) “Toxic Tours: Communicating the ‘Presence’ of Chemical Contamination”, in Communication and Public Participation in Environmental Decision Making. State University of New York Press.