Counter-Narrative: How Progressive Academics Can Challenge Extremists and Promote Social Justice

H.L. Goodall, Jr.

Mar 2012 · Left Coast Press

About this ebook

Goodall portrays a world caught up in the middle of a narrative arms race, where the message of the political right has outflanked the message of the political left.  It is a world where narratives used by the far right inch ever closer to those employed by right-wing extremists in the Muslim world.  Rather than dismiss the use of political narratives as a shallow tactic of the opposition, Goodall promotes their usefulness and outlines a number of ways that liberal academics can retake the public discourse from the extremist opposition. This is an essential text for the aspiring public intellectual and will appeal to students and scholars of qualitative methods, communications and media, and political science alike.

About the author

The late H. L. (Bud) Goodall, Jr. was Professor of Communication and Director of the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University. He was the author or co-author of 20 books, including A Need to Know: The Clandestine History of a CIA Family (Left Coast Press, Inc., 2006), and over 100 articles, chapters, and papers. A Need to Know received the 2006 Best Book Award from the National Communication Association’s Ethnography Division. A pioneer in the field of creative nonfiction, Goodall covered a range of topics including high-technology organizations and cultures, rock ‘n’ roll bands, and alternative religions. He co-wrote the award-winning textbook Organizational Communication: Balancing Creativity and Constraint (with Eric Eisenberg and Angela Trethewey) and also authored the highly acclaimed Writing the New Ethnography in 2000. With Steve Corman and Angela Trethewey, he co-edited a volume entitled Weapons of Mass Persuasion: Strategic Communication and the Struggle Against Violent Extremists.