Scare Tactics, the first book on the subject, provides a theory of the structure of reasoning used in fear and threat appeal argumentation. Such arguments come under the heading of the argumentum ad baculum, the `argument to the stick/club', traditionally treated as a fallacy in the logic textbooks. The new dialectical theory is based on case studies of many interesting examples of the use of these arguments in advertising, public relations, politics, international negotiations, and everyday argumentation on all kinds (...) of subjects. Many of these arguments are amusing, once you see the clever tactic used; others are scary. Some of the arguments appear to be quite reasonable, while others are highly suspicious, or even outrageously fraudulent. In addition to the examples taken from logic textbooks, other cases treated come from a variety of sources, including political debates, legal arguments, and arguments from media sources, like magazine articles and television ads. The purpose of this book is to explain how such arguments work as devices of persuasion, and to develop a method for analyzing and evaluating their reasonable and fallacious uses in particular cases. The book shows how such arguments share a common structure, revealing several distinctive forms of argument nested within each other. Based on its account of this cognitive structure, the new dialectical theory presents methods for identifying, analyzing, and evaluating these arguments, as they are used in specific cases. The book is a scholarly contribution to argumentation theory. It is written in an accessible style, and uses many colorful and provocative examples of fear and threat appeal arguments that are suitable for classroom discussions. The matters treated will be of interest to professionals and students in law, critical thinking, advertising, speech communication, informal logic, cognitive science, rhetoric, and media studies. (shrink)

Picking up the question of what FLaK might be, this editorial considers the relationship between openness and closure in feminist legal studies. How do we draw on feminist struggles for openness in common resources, from security to knowledge, as we inhabit a compromised space in commercial publishing? We think about this first in relation to the content of this issue: on image-based abuse continuums, asylum struggles, trials of protestors, customary justice, and not-so-timely reparations. Our thoughts take us through the different (...) ways that openness and closure work in struggles against violence, cruel welcomes, and re-arrangements of code and custom. Secondly, we share some reflections on methodological openness and closure as the roundtable conversation on asylum, and the interview with Riles, remind us of #FLaK2016 and its method of scattering sources as we think about how best to mix knowledges. Thirdly, prompted by the FLaK kitchen table conversations on openness, publishing and ‘getting the word out’, we respond to Kember’s call to ‘open up open access’. We explain the different current arrangements for opening up FLS content and how green open access, the sharedit initiative, author request and publisher discretion present alternatives to gold open access. Finally drawing on Franklin and Spade, we show how there are a range of ‘wench tactics’—adapting gifts, stalling and resting—which we deploy as academic editors who are trying to have an impact on the access, use and circulation of our journal, even though we do not own the journal we edit. These wench tactics are alternatives to the more obvious or reported tactic of resignation, or withdrawing academic labour from editing and reviewing altogether. They help us think about brewing editorial time, what ambivalence over our 25th birthday might mean, and how to inhabit painful places. In this, we respond in our own impure, compromised way to da Silva’s call not to forget the native and slave as we do FLaK, and repurpose shrapnel, in our common commitments. (shrink)

Those in the openness movement believe that access to information is inherently democratic, and assume the effects of openness will all be good from the movement’s perspective. But means are not ends, nothing is inevitable, and just what will be done with openly available information once achieved is rarely specified. One implicit goal of the openness movement is to create and sustain politically useful memory in situations in which official memory may not suffice, but to achieve this, openness is not (...) enough. With the transition from a panopticon to a panspectron environment, the production of open information not only provides support for communities but also contributes to surveillance. Proprietary ownership of information is being challenged, but there is erosion of ownership in the sense of being confident in what is known. Some tactics currently in use need to be re–evaluated to determine their actual effects under current circumstances. Successfully achieving tactical memory in the 21st century also requires experimentation with new types of tactics, including those of technological discretion and of scale as a medium. At the most abstract level, the key political battle of the 21st century may not be between particular political parties or ideologies but, rather, the war between mathematics and narrative creativity. (shrink)

In Michel de Certeau’s Invention of the Everyday, improvisational community dance function as a catalyst for the subversive art of the oppressed, via its ancient Greek virtue/power of mētis, being “foxlike.” And in de Certeau’s The Possession of Loudun, this foxlike dance moves to the stage, as an improv chorus that disrupts the events at Loudon when reimagined as a tetralogy of plays at City Dionysia. More precisely, Loudun’s tetralogy could be interpreted as a series of three tragedies and one (...) comedy, the latter of which involves the chorine nuns’ channeling of anomie into a proto-feminist transfiguration. More precisely, the tactical prowess of the nuns’ chorus leader, namely the prioress Jeanne des Anges, elevates her to the status of an angelic prophet, which in de Certeau’s theatrical dancing critique makes her the Loudun tetralogy’s Dionysian, foxlike mage. In conclusion, this analysis suggests de Certeau’s relevance for revolutionary social justice today. (shrink)

Pragmatic Tactics in Mediation Mediation is the process by which a neutral third-party works with disputing parties to assist them in reaching an acceptable, voluntary settlement of their dispute. Mediators are often faced with competing demands over and above those of the dispute itself. For example, establishing and maintaining control of the mediation process without appearing to bully the disputants, persuading a party to reexamine it's position without appearing to lose their neutrality, and convincing a party that the present (...) offer of settlement is the best possible, given the circumstances, without appearing to be determined to reach closure at all costs.The present paper examines data from labor, divorce, and community mediations to show how mediators reduce tensions like those mentioned above through various devices such as establishing common ground, reframing the issue, use of metaphorical examples, and reliance on innuendo, ambiguity, and equivocation. (shrink)

The just-war framework neatly distinguishes between jus ad bellum, the criteria that address political leaders’ decisions for waging war, and jus in bello, the criteria that address soldiers’ condu...

This article responds to recent debates in critical algorithm studies about the significance of the term “algorithm.” Where some have suggested that critical scholars should align their use of the term with its common definition in professional computer science, I argue that we should instead approach algorithms as “multiples”—unstable objects that are enacted through the varied practices that people use to engage with them, including the practices of “outsider” researchers. This approach builds on the work of Laura Devendorf, Elizabeth Goodman, (...) and Annemarie Mol. Different ways of enacting algorithms foreground certain issues while occluding others: computer scientists enact algorithms as conceptual objects indifferent to implementation details, while calls for accountability enact algorithms as closed boxes to be opened. I propose that critical researchers might seek to enact algorithms ethnographically, seeing them as heterogeneous and diffuse sociotechnical systems, rather than rigidly constrained and procedural formulas. To do so, I suggest thinking of algorithms not “in” culture, as the event occasioning this essay was titled, but “as” culture: part of broad patterns of meaning and practice that can be engaged with empirically. I offer a set of practical tactics for the ethnographic enactment of algorithmic systems, which do not depend on pinning down a singular “algorithm” or achieving “access,” but which rather work from the partial and mobile position of an outsider. (shrink)

The metaphor of “repertoire” is increasingly used in the study of contention to convey the fact that people act collectively through a limited set of cultural routines. Yet despite its broad adoption, the term is loosely defined and rarely subject to empirical verification. This has led to unfruitful scholarly disputes, with most perspectives assuming that change in repertoires is independent from how actors perform them. Drawing a parallel between the dynamics of repertoire performance and jazz improvisation, I propose a pragmatist (...) definition of repertoires, understood as relational sets of collective practices that become routinized as habit-sets and become a baseline for innovation when actors face puzzling situations. I then provide a theoretical model for analyzing change in contentious repertoires, which relies on the study of the co-constitutive relation between tactical affordances, actors’ strategies and identities, and contexts. I illustrate this model with three secondary cases of unexpected tactical innovation. (shrink)

In Michel de Certeau’s Invention of the Everyday, improvisational community dance function as a catalyst for the subversive art of the oppressed, via its ancient Greek virtue/power of mētis, being “foxlike.” And in de Certeau’s The Possession of Loudun, this foxlike dance moves to the stage, as an improv chorus that disrupts the events at Loudon when reimagined as a tetralogy of plays at City Dionysia. More precisely, Loudun’s tetralogy could be interpreted as a series of three tragedies and one (...) comedy, the latter of which involves the chorine nuns’ channeling of anomie into a proto-feminist transfiguration. More precisely, the tactical prowess of the nuns’ chorus leader, namely the prioress Jeanne des Anges, elevates her to the status of an angelic prophet, which in de Certeau’s theatrical dancing critique makes her the Loudun tetralogy’s Dionysian, foxlike mage. In conclusion, this analysis suggests de Certeau’s relevance for revolutionary social justice today. (shrink)

post hos elefantorum fulgentium formidandam speciem et truculentos hiatus uix mentes pauidae perferebant; ad quorum stridorem odoremque et insuetum aspectum magis equi terrebantur. COKNELISSEN, Mnemosyne, xiv , 280, comments: ‘Non intellego fulgentium. Minime audiendus est Wagnerus, qui fulgentes elephantes dictos esse contendit ob cutem glabram. Corrigendum puto ingentium. Porro non satis intellego quomodo hiatus elefantorum militibus pauorem incutere potuerit. Wagnerus, qui omnia con-coquere solet, interpretatur proboscidas. Nescio an scripserit A. barritus.’.

This work considers current models for understanding tactical interaction among social movement actors and finds them insufficient for making sense of the tactical work required of the Irish women's movement. Analysis of Irish feminist efforts to expand reproductive freedom calls into question the idea that tactical innovations are solely responses to countermovements or state repression. In this case, feminist activists spent considerable energy avoiding co-optation by sympathetic men and class-based movements and competing with economic and nationalist dilemmas that capture the (...) lion's share of public attention. “Friendly fire” refers to the process by which nonoppositional groups within and around, but not of, a movement threaten movement aims. Observational work focused on feminist campaign meetings and political theater yields significant insights concerning the effects of friendly fire and, specifically, the role of men in women's movements. (shrink)

Ingratiation is an impression management strategy whereby actors try to curry favor with targets, and is one of the more pervasive social activities in a workplace. An assumption in the literature is that a target’s awareness of the tactical purposes behind ingratiation is an ethical concern which triggers suspicions of ulterior motives and casts the actor as distrustful. However, this assumption fails to consider alternative explanations in that ingratiation may also be perceived as occurring for authentic purposes. This alternative view (...) may cause targets to cast the actor differently, and thus presents an intriguing ethical paradox where actors could be recognized by targets as trustful, distrustful, or some level in-between. This research draws on behavioral ethics and attributional models to investigate supervisor trust of employees who engage in ingratiation. We report two studies that examine perceived tactical ingratiation, perceived authentic ingratiation, and their interaction as predictors of supervisor trust using multisource data from two field samples. Across the two studies, we find positive interactions between tactical and authentic ingratiation as predictors of trust and trustworthiness. Study 2 also shows that combined tactical and authentic ingratiation predicts the trustworthiness dimensions of benevolence and integrity, but not ability. The results suggest that ingratiation is portrayed somewhat bleaker than necessary in the literature, and that when actors engage in tactical ingratiation that is also deemed authentic, targets respond with less concern than the literature would suggest. (shrink)

Progress in the “theory of mind” debate would be better served at this point by abandoning the search for a perfect “critical experiment” and developing an incremental research program based on a systematic theory of “theory of mind.” Studies using the goggle procedure advocated by Heyes should dissociate the ability to see from possible behavioral artifacts of “blind” trainers.

In “Willpower with and without effort”, G. Ainslie advances our understanding of selfcontrol by theoretically unifying multiple forms of willpower. But one crucial question remains unanswered: How do agents pick the right forms of willpower in each situation? I argue that willpower requires tactical skill, which detects willpower-demanding contexts, selects context-appropriate tactics, and monitors their implementation. Research on tactical skill will significantly advance our understanding of willpower.

Despite extensive evidence for its effectiveness, ECT remains the subject of fierce opposition from those contesting its benefits and claiming extreme harms. Alongside some reflections on my experiences of this treatment, I examine the case against ECT, and find that it appears to rest primarily on unsubstantiated claims about major ethical violations, rather than clinical factors such as effectiveness and risk.

Competitive negotiators frequently use tactics which others view as "unethical", in that these tactics either violate standards of truth telling or violate the perceived rules of negotiation. This paper sought to determine how business students viewed a number of marginally ethical negotiating tactics, and to determine the underlying factor structure of these tactics. The factor analysis of these tactics revealed five clear factors which were highly similar across the two samples, and which parallel (to a (...) moderate degree) categories of tactics proposed by earlier theory. Data from one sample also permitted comparisons of the appropriateness of certain tactics across gender, nationality, ethnic origin and perception of one's negotiating style. (shrink)

Folk psychology is under threat - that is to say - our everyday conception that human beings are agents who experience the world in terms of sights, sounds, tastes, smells and feelings and who deliberate, make plans, and generally execute actions on the basis of their beliefs, needs and wants - is under threat. This threat is evidenced in intellectual circles by the growing attitude amongst some cognitive scientists that our common sense categories are in competition with connectionist theories and (...) modern neuroscience. It is often thought that either folk psychology or modern cognitive science must go. It is in these terms that the battle lines of today’s philosophy of mind are drawn. (shrink)

This study examines the first two years of a tactical innovation that emerged in 2012 in Egypt, which involved activist groups organizing patrol-type "intervention teams" to combat sexual violence against women in public spaces. Findings reveal that the new tactic took different forms in the two places in which it was deployed, even though the same actors employed it. I argue that the place in which a new tactic emerges shapes the form it takes. When coming up with a new (...) collective action tactic, activists elaborate visions about how to carry out their actions based on their collective identities and taste in tactics. But as they start experimenting with the new tactic on the ground, they learn about the places' material affordances, symbolic valence, and power relations, as well as the constraints and opportunities that they represent. The material properties of places shape activists' possibilities of movement, patterns of communication, field of vision, and capacity to escape repression or reach safe spaces. The configuration of actors in a place shapes the nature of their interactions with others on the ground, possible alliances, and sources of conflict. The symbolic meanings of places shape the resonance of a group’s actions and the degree of resistance that actors face. Place in part determines the ability of activists to develop a tactic in the form that best fits their preferences. (shrink)

Walking down the street in Toronto one day in 1987, pedestrians were surprised to see a message flashing across an electronic billboard. “Lesbians fly Air Canada” it repeatedly signaled. The next day the message was gone. A gay rights group broadcast the phrase, but their communication terminated abruptly when Air Canada threatened to apply for an injunction to stop the group from using its name.

Abstract There is general agreement that the targeting of civilians in war is morally wrong. But sometimes starvation tactics are accepted as being a better option than direct military attacks. This article questions this view by arguing that starvation tactics affect civilians first and inflict long-term suffering. It argues that they are not just unless they can be limited to a small area where only military personnel will be affected. It looks at the provision for starvation tactics (...) in the Geneva Conventions, and at the argument of double effect. It then illustrates the argument with three case studies: the siege of Leningrad; the application of sanctions prior to and during the Gulf War in 1990?1991; and restrictions of food during the war in Bosnia. (shrink)

post hos elefantorum fulgentium formidandam speciem et truculentos hiatus uix mentes pauidae perferebant; ad quorum stridorem odoremque et insuetum aspectum magis equi terrebantur. COKNELISSEN, Mnemosyne, xiv, 280, comments: ‘Non intellego fulgentium. Minime audiendus est Wagnerus, qui fulgentes elephantes dictos esse contendit ob cutem glabram. Corrigendum puto ingentium. Porro non satis intellego quomodo hiatus elefantorum militibus pauorem incutere potuerit. Wagnerus, qui omnia con-coquere solet, interpretatur proboscidas. Nescio an scripserit A. barritus.’.