Contentious Conversations Research Articles

Slowing it Down: Towards Facilitating Interpersonal Mindfulness in Online Polarizing Conversations Over Social Media

Discussions about polarizing topics are essential to have, yet they can easily become hostile, aggressive, or distressing on current social media platforms. Content moderation interventions aim to mitigate this issue, though such approaches are reactionary, removing harmful content only after it has been posted. We conducted a mixed-methods experiment with 40 participants to investigate how a design friction that manipulates the temporal flow during a contentious conversation can foster interpersonal mindfulness, a trait critical for productive communication. Dyads were randomly assigned into the Control Group which received no intervention, and the Experiment Group where participants were limited to sending one message per two-minute interval. Triangulating quantitative and qualitative data from conversation logs, questionnaires, interviews, and computational text analysis, our findings revealed a two-fold effect: Experiment Group participants felt simultaneously frustrated by the intervention as it disrupted the pacing of their conversation and interfered with rapport-building, and appreciative of the intervention as it nudged them towards writing thoughtful and task-focused messages. We discuss implications of these findings for future investigation into the design of temporal interventions to influence interpersonal mindfulness during polarizing online conversations.

Enraged and Engaged? Emotions as Motives for Discussing Politics

The 2016 presidential campaign made some feel angry, while others felt anxious, embarrassed, or enthusiastic. We explore how these emotions relate to patterns of political talk within informal conversation networks. Using items from the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, we link emotional reactions to rates of conversation, interest in political talk, and exposure to disagreeable viewpoints. Rather than deterring people from contentious conversations, we find that the heightened emotions are associated with greater engagement in political talk. Those who feel angry do not confront their opponents. Instead, they avoid conversations with those who do not share their views, where anger is tied to partisan patterns of political discussion. Feelings of embarrassment have the opposite relationship, as those who felt embarrassed during the campaign were more likely to discuss politics with those with contrary views. These results inform when and how people engage in political talk.

Reflective structured dialogue: A conversation with 2018 American Academy of Religion excellence in teaching award winner Jill DeTemple

AbstractThis conversation between the 2018 American Academy of Religion Excellence in Teaching Award winner Jill DeTemple and the editors of Teaching Theology and Religion continues an occasional series of interviews that has previously featured Jonathan Z. Smith, Stephen Prothero, Mary Pierce Brosmer, Mary Elizabeth Mullino Moore, and two previous AAR Teaching Award Winners, Joanne Maguire and Lynn Neal. After initial discussion about teaching the intro course we launch into a long discussion of “Reflective Structured Dialogue” – an effective teaching technique for staging contentious conversations, building trust and understanding, and a dialogic culture of curiosity.

Review of Making Sense of the College Curriculum: Faculty Stories of Change, Conflict, and Accommodation

Since the 1983 publication of the cautionary study, A Nation at Risk, the state of an institution’s curriculum may foster both cooperative and contentious conversation among its faculty. Individual...

Cutting Close to the Bone: Student Trauma, Free Speech, and Institutional Responsibility in Medical Education

Learning the societal roles and responsibilities of the physician may involve difficult, contentious conversations about topics such as race, gender, sexual orientation, and class, as well as violence, inequities, sexual assault, and child abuse. If not done well, these discussions may be deeply traumatizing to learners for whom these subjects "cut close to the bone." Equally traumatizing is exposure to injustice and mistreatment, as well as to the sights, sounds, and smells of suffering and pain in the clinical years. This potential for iatrogenic educational trauma remains unaddressed, and medical educators must take responsibility for attending to it. Possible solutions include trigger warnings or statements given to students before an educational activity that may cause personal discomfort. The authors of this Perspective assert, however, both that this concept does not distinguish between psychological trauma and discomfort and that well-intentioned trigger warnings target the wrong goal-the avoidance of distress. Exposure to discomfort not only is unavoidable in the practice of medicine but may be crucial to personal and professional moral development. The authors argue that a more appropriate solution is to create safe spaces for dialogues about difficult topics and jarring experiences. This approach places even the notion of free speech under a critical lens-it is not an end in itself but a means to create a professional ethic dedicated to treating all individuals with excellence and justice. Ultimately, this approach aspires to create an inclusive curriculum sensitive to the realities of teaching and learning in increasingly diverse societies.

Conversations about analgesics in the emergency department: A qualitative study

ObjectiveWe sought to characterize conversations about analgesics in the Emergency Department (ED) setting. MethodsA secondary analysis of 47 audio-recorded ED visits containing conversations about analgesics was performed. Data were collected at an urban, academic medical center among adults with one of four diagnoses. Visit transcripts were analyzed qualitatively using content and constant comparative analysis. The speaker, medication being discussed, and overall conversation concordance were categorized. ResultsAmong the 47 transcripts there were 1102 unique statements related to analgesics. Thirteen codes were identified; however, four codes (discussing details of administration, forecasting, side effects, past history) accounted for over 65% of the conversations. Patient requests, statements related to chronic pain and contentious conversations occurred infrequently, but were present (17% discordant conversations, 83% concordant). Medical providers dominated the conversations with patients' contributions equaling only a quarter of total coded conversation. ConclusionsThese findings characterize the narrow range of topics discussed about analgesics and demonstrate that many risks of opioid medications were not discussed. Practice ImplicationsIncreased counseling about opioids may be warranted given rising opioid-related deaths. To be prepared, providers may wish to reflect on how to approach different topics related to opioids and analgesia prior to engaging in such discussions.

Contentious Conversations: Using Mediation Techniques in Difficult Clinical Ethics Consultations

Mediators utilize a wide range of skills in the process of facilitating dialogue and resolving conflicts. Among the most useful techniques for clinical ethics consultants (CECs)-and surely the least discussed-are those employed in acrimonious, hostile conversations between stakeholders. In the context of clinical ethics disputes or other bedside conflicts, good mediation skills can reverse the negative interactions that have prevented the creation of workable treatment plans or ethical consensus. This essay lays out the central framework mediators use in distinguishing positions from interests and describes a set of strategies for managing contentious ethics consultations or working with "difficult" patients, families, or patient-careprovider interactions.

#TeamNatural: Black Hair and the Politics of Community in Digital Media

Perhaps no aspect of black women’s corporality is more contested and debated than their hair. Social-media personalities of the self-described natural-hair community mediate complex and often contentious conversations about black women’s bodies and lives in the twenty-first century. Based on my previous research on black women and the politics of beauty culture in the twentieth century, I examine the ways that online natural-hair communities provide a rich archive for those who wish to take seriously the concerns of black women. Specifically, this essay discusses the ways in which community is defined, cultivated, and contested in the world of digital beauty, from my perspective as both a historian of black beauty culture and a participant in these online communities.

Putting Policy into Performance Studies?

With this essay, my hope is to contribute to recent conversations about art and its supporting infrastructures – discussions that are working, I believe, to unsettle a kind of anti-institutional prejudice that has haunted performance studies. As the rather polemical title hints, I enter these discussions by revisiting an older set of debates that arose in the annals of cultural studies in the 1990s. I argue that Tony Bennett's controversial claim – that we put policy into cultural studies – unintentionally invites us to examine how ‘policy’ itself might continue to serve as a generative term to further unravel unhelpful dichotomies and persistent predispositions. By tracking a critical genealogy of these so-called ‘policy debates,’ I contend also that we move beyond the acknowledgement – or avowal – that arts of institutional thinking are essential in and for performance studies. Ultimately, I want to suggest that performance as policy has a unique capacity to inspire experimental modes of social organization and perhaps even an overhaul of our institutions of public life. My hope is that an examination of the ways a notion of what I call ‘institutional (dis)avowal’ is already embedded in the history of contentious conversations about culture and administration will both bolster this claim and open avenues for further inquiry.

Planet of the Jews: Eruvim, Geography, and Jewish Identity in Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union

This paper argues that Michael Chabon's novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union , participates in a long and contentious conversation about the role of Israel in Jewish identity. By examining the role that eruvim play in creating and contesting Jewishness in Chabon's 2007 postmodern detective novel, the paper suggests that Chabon crafts a world in which geographic space complicates, rather than simplifies, Jewish identity in diaspora and postmodernity. The Jewish Alaska of Chabon's imagination therefore has a profound connection to his controversial statements about the modern geopolitical state of Israel.

Couples, contentious conversations, mobile telephone use and driving

Studies have shown that the inappropriate use of in-vehicle technology may lead to hazardous disruption of driver performance. This paper reports an investigation into the socio-technical implications of maintaining a difficult conversation while driving. Twenty romantically involved couples participated in a driving-simulator experiment. The participants engaged in emotionally difficult conversations while one partner drove. The contentious conversation topics were identified using a revealed differences protocol, requiring partners to discuss sources of ongoing disagreement in their relationship. The conversations were conducted either using handsfree telephone or with both parties present in the simulator. Results indicate that the revealed differences tasks were subjectively viewed as emotionally more difficult than a control. Driver performance was found to be adversely effected for both longitudinal and lateral vehicle control. Performance was worst during contentious conversations with the partner present, suggesting the drivers may be better able to regulate driving task demands with the partner not in the vehicle during difficult discussions.

Carbon accounting

PurposeA fully functioning carbon accounting system must be based on measurement that is materially accurate, consistent over space and time, and incorporates data uncertainty. However, achieving these goals is difficult because current carbon accounting efforts are spread across three distinct organisational fields, each prioritising different goals. This paper aims to address these issues.Design/methodology/approachThe authors identified three fields drawn together by the science of how carbon emissions can be measured, the social practices of carbon accounting, and accountability within the global carbon governance system. The authors hosted a workshop, and invited representatives participating in each of the organisational fields to highlight the contentious conversations within their field. The authors facilitated an across‐field exploration of whether and how to achieve accuracy, consistency and certainty in carbon accounting.FindingsIt was found that there are tensions between accuracy, consistency and certainty in carbon accounting both within and across organisational fields. Framing the evolution of carbon accounting as negotiation between these goals across fields yields powerful implications for addressing current challenges in carbon accounting.Practical implicationsThe authors provide guidance to policymakers on how to recognise legitimate uncertainty in carbon management science, manage the cost‐benefits of policy and reporting mechanisms, and ensure actual greenhouse gas emissions reductions.Originality/valueThis paper exploits the unusual approach of integrating carbon accounting across levels of analysis, from the molecular level through processes, organisations, industries and nations. This approach should help scientific, corporate and policy decision‐makers move towards a more fully functioning carbon accounting system.

Contentious Conversations

The author explores the place of professional debate within NCTE and in the pages of English Journal.

The Liberty Bell (review)

Reviewed by: The Liberty Bell Marla R. Miller (bio) The Liberty Bell. By Gary B. Nash. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010. Pp. 242. $24.00 cloth) This short biography of an American icon delivers an efficient and engaging account of the place of the bell in U.S. history. Historian Gary Nash—one of the nation's preeminent historians of the American Revolution—attends not only to the changing role of the bell in the mainstream political and cultural history of the country but also to the parallel reception and alternate meanings of the bell among African and Native American communities. The result is a narrative that is brisk and instructive, yet also subtle and complex. Unsurprisingly, the book is full of fun tidbits. Readers learn, for instance, that the Whitechapel Foundry—still in operation today—continues to maintain that the Pennsylvania Statehouse bell, which gained its famous crack almost instantly, "was damaged in transit or was the victim of an inexperienced bell ringer" (p. 7), that the bell, had it not been spirited out of Philadelphia before the British occupation, might have provided some thirty thousand rounds of enemy ammunition, and that the bell made no fewer than seven cross-country road trips between 1885 and 1915. Early chapters trace the history of the bell from its arrival in Pennsylvania through the tumult of the Revolution to its christening as the "Liberty Bell," a product of antislavery activism. But readers [End Page 87] drawn to the book because they are already somewhat familiar with those stories—or whose curiosity was piqued by the cameo appearance of the bell in National Treasure—may find still more fascinating the chapters that take up the story of the bell in the latter half of the nineteenth century and through the twentieth. By the time of the national centennial in 1876, the Liberty Bell had begun to assume its iconic status, a symbol of unity "that would bind the nation's wounds" and "complete the process of reconciliation" (p. 64). But the bell would continue to have different meanings for different observers, from the Blackfeet chief Little Bear, who posed alongside the bell at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition, to the members of the Congress of Racial Equality who staged a 1963 sit-in there. Indeed, the malleable and contested meanings of the bell are Nash's main concern. Nash himself became deeply engaged in such contestation when he helped ignite controversy over the contemporary interpretation of the bell. In the early 1990s, Nash explains, the National Park Service (NPS), which assumed custody of the bell in the 1940s, began planning to move it to a new home, a site more accessible to its thousands of annual visitors. The site chosen—the corner of Sixth and Market Streets—dripped with irony; the onetime site of the McMasters mansion and later the home of President George Washington, was ground once walked by the enslaved men and women who made Washington's leadership, and the new nation itself, possible. But the planned exhibit, many were stunned to learn, would not engage that difficult issue. Nash explains how tensions between local and national forces both within and beyond the NPS in time "erupted in sharp, even venomous debate" (p. 201). Nash was a key player in those debates, and his account delivers more than just a summary of them; the book preserves his own perspective on those contentious conversations, which resulted in a substantial overhaul of the exhibition plans. In fact, the book in some ways allows readers unable to make the trip to Philadelphia to get some sense of the story the exhibit now conveys. Nash seems [End Page 88] satisfied with the outcome. Quoting NPS Chief Historian Dwight Pitcaithley (who shared Nash's point of view on the interpretive imperative here), he concludes that "the 'liberty road' has been filled with potholes and obstacles and while the United States has a more expansive definition of freedom and liberty than it did one hundred or even fifty years ago, the struggle is not over" (p. 216); still, Nash posits, the bell, now situated in the context of the revised exhibition, today "is truly everyone...

The Defense of Phillis Wheatley

The Defense of Phillis WheatleyAs the first African- American woman to publish in the colonies, Phillis and her poetry has been glorified and reviled. one hand, she was an exemplar of the intellectual capabilities of enslaved Africans, the foremother of the African- American literary tradition and received her manumission after her publication of Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773). the other hand, she has also been critiqued for being a poor imitator of Alexander Pope and his contemporaries, for not reflecting the black experience, and for writing in a neoclassical or style. Intervening in this contentious conversation and gesturing toward new plateaus, John C. Shields crafts a fascinating portrait of a literary tiailblazer. In Phillis Wheatley's of Liberation: Backgrounds and Contexts (Tennessee, 2008), Shields passionately defends Wheatley's legacy and argues that her use of neoclassicism, biblical themes, and techniques such as the heroic couplet are reflections of Wheatley's artistic and spiritual freedom. Through the course of six chapters, Shields incorporates eighteenth-century primary sources such as Thomas Jefferson's Nofes on the State of Virginia (1787) and bears witness from the perspective of a scholar twhose interest in Phillis began as a doctoral candidate at the University of Tennessee and has sustained the entirety of his academic career. Thus, in Phillis Wheatley's of archival research, the evolution of Studies, and an examination of reception history culminate in Wheatley's lyrics giving voice to the diurnal concerns of disenfranchised colonists and for enslaved Africans.From the beginning, Shields's introduction describes the social, cultural, and intellectual biases that haunted the reception and readings of Wheatley's poetry. However, instead of focusing upon the authentication of her authorship and validation of the poet's youthful gifts by white men such as John Erving, he begins with the commentary of Jefferson. As well as being a founding father of the United States of America and the nation's third president, he was also a slave owner. Subsequently, he was invested in proclaiming that the black race was incapable of producing a writer of verse and in undermining Wheatley's achievements. From Shields's vantage point, Jefferson is an antecedent of other misinformed and misguided perceptions of and her work. Ironically, Jefferson's refusal to acknowledge her as an artist also becomes a compelling narrative thread in of Liberation. Thus, an insult is transformed into an indictment of the racial, gender, and class prejudices which contributed to years of devaluing Wheatley's literary contributions.Consequently, in chapter 1, Poetics of Liberation, Shields demonstrates Wheatley's ability to attain freedom through the written word. With her devotion to Christian values, mastery of neoclassicism, and artistic representation of hybrid cultural experiences in Africa, America, and Britain, she transcends the limitations of her social position. Furthermore, with the theoretical framework of Mortimer Adler's The Idea of Freedom, Shields explains the creative and moral beliefs that undergirded the young poet's autonomy.1 Explicating a stanza of On Imagination (1773), he argues that creativity bestows upon selfdetermination and authority to control her own art. Also, with Wheatley's epistle to her friend and mentor Samson Occom, Shields shows the poet's strains of freedom consisted of expressing a desire for liberation for all of humanity. Simultaneously, the critical eye of Shields and primary sources from the mind, heart, and hand of convey her poetical and political consciousness.In the second chapter, entitled Wheatley Considered Intellectually Impoverished: The First 190 Years, Shields provides a selective history of commentary about and her verse. …

INHERITING DU BOIS

What would it mean to treat W. E. B. Du Bois as a “living political thinker,” Tommie Shelby asks. The formulation of the question indicates one answer: acknowledging Du Bois's twofold legacy for political theory and philosophy. On the one hand, his body of work as a political theorist is rich and provocative enough that it ought to be, as Robert Gooding-Williams (2009) urges, the subject of serious inquiry in its own right. On the other hand, engaging Du Bois as a political theorist enables contemporary scholars to reflect on the political challenges of our own time, even when Du Bois offers answers we would not own for ourselves. Perhaps most crucially, taking Du Bois's work seriously requires a rigorous engagement with the past and an active refutation of declarations of a “postracial” age that belie yawning racial inequalities, the continuing devaluation of non-White lives, and the unredressed injuries—to American citizens, to the polity itself, and to women and men well beyond U.S. borders—of White supremacy. All of the participants in this symposium would, I think, endorse this view in its broadest strokes. But to inherit Du Bois as a political thinker is also to participate in an ongoing and often contentious conversation about race, democracy, and Du Bois himself. Accordingly, my comments will focus on two clusters of issues. The first is raised by Rogers Smith's and Tommie Shelby's vigorous disagreement with the idea of Black reparations that I explore in the second chapter of Democracy's Reconstruction. The second involves a set of unresolved tensions bequeathed by Du Bois and addressed in Gooding-Williams' extraordinary book and Cristina Beltrán's meditations on the Afro-modern political tradition and Latino politics today.

At Play in the Fields and Playing the Field: The débat amoureux in the Pastourelle and the Heptaméron

At the centre of the traditional medieval pastourelle is a débat amoureux , a spirited and sometimes contentious conversation between a shepherdess and her would-be suitor. The débat amoureux , in an expanded and more complex form, features prominently in Marguerite de Navarre's Heptaméron , both in the novellas themselves and in the frame story that surrounds them. Although the pastourelle 's influence on the Heptaméron has never been described, it is clear that the collection of novellas by the Queen of Navarre inherited substantially from these narrative medieval poems.

Contentious Conversation: Framing the ‘Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture’ in Russia

The relationship between the Russian government and the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) has increasingly become the object of much scrutiny. The debate centres on the question of whether or not the ROC enjoys inordinate influence over the Russian political sphere. This article examines one case in which the Moscow Patriarchate has attempted to influence federal policy, namely, by lobbying the state to include courses on ‘Orthodox culture’ in the federal curriculum. The article draws on social movement theory to argue that the ROC has, to date, failed in its endeavour, as a result of a combination of three factors. First, it has failed to persuade either the state or society that teaching ‘Orthodox culture’ in schools is a worthy cause. Second, it has been unable to demonstrate a united front on the issue, revealing serious disagreements within the ranks of both clergy and laity regarding the content and form of the proposed curriculum. Third, it has been unable to demonstrate that it represents a constituency sufficiently numerous for the government to take its interests seriously in this case. The article thus argues that the relationship between church and state in the Russian Federation is more contentious than frequent joint appearances of clerical and lay leaders would suggest, and that the ROC is in the position of a junior partner whose ability to influence the state is circumscribed by important societal and political factors.

Stories, identities, and political change

Part 1 Stories and Explanations Chapter 2 Introduction Chapter 3 Softcore Solipsism Chapter 4 The Trouble with Stories Part 5 Political Identities Chapter 6 Stein Rokkan and Political Identities Chapter 7 Political Identities in History Chapter 8 Micro, Macro, or Megrim? Chapter 9 Social Movements and Other Political Interactions Part 10 Contentious Voices Chapter 11 Voice in Contentious Politics Chapter 12 Contentious Conversation Chapter 13 Where Do Rights Come From? Chapter 14 Power-Top Down and Bottom Up Part 15 Political Change Chapter 16 States and Nationalism in Europe 1492-1992 Chapter 17 The Time of States Chapter 18 Processes and Mechanisms of Democratization Chapter 19 So What?

Translating the Word: Dialogism and Debate in Two Gikuyu Dictionaries

Much of the literature on missionaries and translation in colonial Africa has tended to view missionary or colonial authored texts (Bibles, dictionaries, and grammars in particular) as instruments through which foreign ways of thinking were imposed upon unsuspecting Africans. In a detailed comparison of two Gikuyu dictionaries—one authored by an Anglican missionary and the other by a Presbyterian missionary some ten years later—this article locates significant contradictions in meanings, particularly in words associated with religion and authority. By situating these contradictions within the social history of early twentieth‐century Gikuyuland, the author is able to demonstrate that these contradictions are not “mistakes”; rather, such inconsistencies evidence the complex ontological and political debates provoked out of early evangelistic activity. For the author, who draws theoretical insight from Homi Bhabha and M. M. Bakhtin, mission texts like dictionaries are fundamentally dialogical, the product of sustained and contentious conversations between missionaries and African interlocutors. Thus, they not only shaped Gikuyu life, as earlier scholarship contended, but were profoundly shaped bycontemporary Gikuyu debates over religion, power, and authority.