1NC
FW
a. Interpretation and violation – the affirmative should defend the
desirability of topical government action
“USFG should” means the debate is solely about a policy established by
governmental means
Ericson ‘03
(Jon M., Dean Emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts – California Polytechnic U., et al., The
Debater’s Guide, Third Edition, p. 4)
The Proposition of Policy: Urging Future Action In policy propositions, each
topic contains certain key
elements, although they have slightly different functions from comparable elements of value-oriented propositions. 1. An
agent doing the acting ---“The United States” in “The United States should adopt a policy of free
trade.” Like the object of evaluation in a proposition of value, the agent is the subject of the sentence. 2. The
verb should—the first part of a verb phrase that urges action. 3. An action verb to follow should in the should-verb
combination. For example, should adopt here means to put a program or policy into action though
governmental means. 4. A specification of directions or a limitation of the action desired. The phrase free trade, for
example, gives direction and limits to the topic, which would, for example, eliminate consideration of increasing tariffs,
discussing diplomatic recognition, or discussing interstate commerce. Propositions of policy deal with future action. Nothing
has yet occurred. The entire debate is about whether something ought to occur. What you agree to do,
then, when you accept the affirmative side in such a debate is to offer sufficient and compelling reasons for an audience to
perform the future action that you propose.
“Should” requires defending federal action
Judge Henry Nieto 9, Colorado Court of Appeals, 8-20-2009 People v. Munoz, 240 P.3d 311
(Colo. Ct. App. 2009)
Should" is "used . . . to express duty, obligation
or expediency
"
, propriety,
." Webster's Third New
International Dictionary 2104 (2002). Courts [**15] interpreting the word in various contexts have drawn conflicting conclusions, although
the weight of authority appears to favor interpreting "should" in an imperative,
obligatory sense. HN7A number of courts, confronted with the question of whether using the word "should" in jury instructions
conforms with the Fifth and Sixth Amendment protections governing the reasonable doubt standard, have upheld instructions using the word.
In the courts of other states in which a defendant has argued that the word "should" in the reasonable doubt instruction does
not sufficiently inform the jury that it is bound to find the defendant not guilty if insufficient proof is submitted at trial, the courts have squarely
the word "conveys a sense of duty and obligation and
could not be misunderstood by a jury." See State v. McCloud, 257 Kan. 1, 891 P.2d 324, 335 (Kan. 1995); see also Tyson v.
rejected the argument. They reasoned that
State, 217 Ga. App. 428, 457 S.E.2d 690, 691-92 (Ga. Ct. App. 1995) (finding argument that "should" is directional but not instructional to be
courts
interpreting the word "should" in other types of jury instructions [**16] have also found that the word
conveys to the jury a sense of duty or obligation and not discretion. In Little v. State, 261 Ark. 859,
554 S.W.2d 312, 324 (Ark. 1977), the Arkansas Supreme Court interpreted the word "should" in an
instruction on circumstantial evidence as synonymous with the word "must" and rejected the defendant's argument
that the jury may have been misled by the court's use of the word in the instruction. Similarly, the Missouri Supreme Court
rejected a defendant's argument that the court erred by not using the word "should"
in an instruction on witness credibility which used the word "must" because the two words
without merit); Commonwealth v. Hammond, 350 Pa. Super. 477, 504 A.2d 940, 941-42 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1986). Notably,
have the same meaning. State v. Rack, 318 S.W.2d 211, 215 (Mo. 1958). [*318] In applying a child support statute, the
Arizona Court of Appeals concluded that a legislature's or commission's use of the word
"should" is meant to convey duty or obligation. McNutt v. McNutt, 203 Ariz. 28, 49 P.3d 300, 306 (Ariz. Ct. App.
2002) (finding a statute stating that child support expenditures "should" be allocated for the purpose of parents' federal tax exemption to be
mandatory).
Debate over a controversial point of action creates argumentative
stasis—that’s key to avoid a devolution of debate into competing truth
claims, which destroys the decision-making benefits of the activity
Steinberg and Freeley ’13 David Director of Debate at U Miami, Former President of
CEDA, officer, American Forensic Association and National Communication Association.
Lecturer in Communication studies and rhetoric. Advisor to Miami Urban Debate League,
Masters in Communication, and Austin, JD, Suffolk University, attorney who focuses on
criminal, personal injury and civil rights law, Argumentation and Debate Critical Thinking for
Reasoned Decision Making, Thirteen Edition
Debate is a means of settling differences, so there must be a controversy, a difference of opinion or a
conflict of interest before there can be a debate. If everyone is in agreement on a feet or value or policy, there is no
need or opportunity for debate; the matter can be settled by unanimous consent. Thus, for example, it would be
pointless to attempt to debate "Resolved: That two plus two equals four,” because there is simply no
controversy about this statement. Controversy is an essential prerequisite of debate. Where there is no
clash of ideas, proposals, interests, or expressed positions of issues, there is no debate. Controversy invites decisive
choice between competing positions. Debate cannot produce effective decisions without
clear identification of a question or questions to be answered. For example, general argument
may occur about the broad topic of illegal immigration. How many illegal immigrants live in the United States?
What is the impact of illegal immigration and immigrants on our economy? What is their impact on our communities? Do they
commit crimes? Do they take jobs from American workers? Do they pay taxes? Do they require social services? Is it a problem
that some do not speak English? Is it the responsibility of employers to discourage illegal immigration by not hiring
undocumented workers? Should they have the opportunity to gain citizenship? Does illegal immigration pose a security threat
to our country? Do illegal immigrants do work that American workers are unwilling to do? Are their rights as workers and as
human beings at risk due to their status? Are they abused by employers, law enforcement, housing, and businesses? How are
their families impacted by their status? What is the moral and philosophical obligation of a nation state to maintain its
borders? Should we build a wall on the Mexican border, establish a national identification card, or enforce existing laws
against employers? Should we invite immigrants to become U.S. citizens? Surely you can think of many more concerns to be
addressed by a conversation about the topic area of illegal immigration. Participation in this
“debate” is likely to
be emotional and intense. However, it is not likely to be productive or useful without focus on
a particular question and identification of a line demarcating sides in the controversy. To be
discussed and resolved effectively, controversies are best understood when seated clearly such that all
parties to the debate share an understanding about the objective of the debate. This enables
focus on substantive and objectively identifiable issues facilitating comparison of competing
argumentation leading to effective decisions. Vague understanding results in unfocused deliberation
and poor decisions, general feelings of tension without opportunity for resolution, frustration, and
emotional distress, as evidenced by the failure of the U.S. Congress to make substantial progress on the immigration
debate. Of course, arguments may be presented without disagreement. For example, claims are presented and supported
within speeches, editorials, and advertisements even without opposing or refutational response. Argumentation occurs in a
range of settings from informal to formal, and may not call upon an audience or judge to make a forced choice among
competing claims. Informal discourse occurs as conversation or panel discussion without demanding a decision about a
dichotomous or yes/no question. However, by definition, debate
requires "reasoned judgment on a
proposition. The proposition is a statement about which competing advocates will offer
alternative (pro or con) argumentation calling upon their audience or adjudicator to decide. The
proposition provides focus for the discourse and guides the decision process. Even when a
decision will be made through a process of compromise, it is important to identify the
beginning positions of competing advocates to begin negotiation and movement toward a
center, or consensus position. It is frustrating and usually unproductive to attempt to make a
decision when deciders are unclear as to what the decision is about. The proposition may be implicit in
some applied debates (“Vote for me!”); however, when a vote or consequential decision is called for (as in the courtroom or in
applied parliamentary debate) it is essential that the proposition be explicitly expressed (“the defendant is guilty!”). In aca-
demic debate, the proposition provides essential guidance for the preparation of the
debaters prior to the debate, the case building and discourse presented during the debate,
and the decision to be made by the debate judge after the debate. Someone disturbed by the
problem of a growing underclass of poorly educated, socially disenfranchised youths might observe,
“Public schools are doing a terrible job! They' are overcrowded, and many teachers are poorly qualified in their
subject areas. Even the best teachers can do little more than struggle to maintain order in their classrooms." That same
concerned citizen, facing a complex range of issues, might arrive at an unhelpful decision, such as
"We ought to do something about this” or, worse, “It’s too complicated a problem to deal with." Groups of
concerned citizens worried about the state of public education could join together to express their frustrations, anger,
disillusionment, and emotions regarding the schools, but without a focus for their discussions, they could easily agree about
the sorry state of education without finding points of clarity or potential solutions. A gripe session would
follow.
But if a precise question is posed—such as “What can be done to improve public education?”—then a more
profitable area of discussion is opened up simply by placing a focus on the search for a
concrete solution step. One or more judgments can be phrased in the form of debate propositions, motions for
parliamentary debate, or bills for legislative assemblies, The statements "Resolved: That the federal government
should implement a program of charter schools in at-risk communities” and “Resolved; That the
state of Florida should adopt a school voucher program" more clearly identify specific ways of dealing with
educational problems in a manageable form, suitable for debate. They provide specific policies to be
investigated and aid discussants in identifying points of difference. This focus contributes to better and more
informed decision making with the potential for better results. In academic debate, it provides
better depth of argumentation and enhanced opportunity for reaping the educational benefits of
participation. In the next section, we will consider the challenge of framing the proposition for debate, and its role in the
debate. To have a productive debate, which facilitates effective decision making by directing
and placing limits on the decision to be made, the basis for argument should be clearly
defined. If we merely talk about a topic, such as ‘"homelessness,” or “abortion,” Or “crime,” or
“global warming,” we are likely to have an interesting discussion but not to establish a profitable
basis for argument. For example, the statement “Resolved: That the pen is mightier than the sword” is debatable, yet by
itself fails to provide much basis for dear argumentation. If we take this statement to mean Iliad the written word is more
effective than physical force for some purposes, we can identify a problem area: the comparative effectiveness of writing or
physical force for a specific purpose, perhaps promoting positive social change. (Note that “loose” propositions, such as the
example above, may be defined by their advocates in such a way as to facilitate a clear contrast of competing sides; through
definitions and debate they “become” clearly understood statements even though they may not begin as such. There are
formats for debate that often begin with this sort of proposition. However, in any debate,
at some point, effective
and meaningful discussion relies on identification of a clearly stated or understood
proposition.) Back to the example of the written word versus physical force. Although we now have a general
subject, we have not yet stated a problem. It is still too broad, too loosely worded to promote weII-organized
argument. What sort of writing are we concerned with—poems, novels, government documents, website development,
advertising, cyber-warfare, disinformation, or what? What does it mean to be “mightier" in this context? What kind of physical
force is being compared—fists, dueling swords, bazookas, nuclear weapons, or what? A more specific question might be,
“Would a mutual defense treaty or a visit by our fleet be more effective in assuring Laurania of our support in a certain crisis?”
The basis for argument could be phrased in a debate proposition such as “Resolved: That the United States should enter into a
mutual defense treaty with Laurania.” Negative advocates might oppose this proposition by arguing that fleet maneuvers
would be a better solution. This is not to say that debates should completely avoid creative interpretation of the controversy
by advocates, or that good debates cannot occur over competing interpretations of the controversy; in fact, these sorts of
debates may be very engaging. The
point is that debate is best facilitated by the guidance
provided by focus on a particular point of difference, which will be outlined in the following
discussion.
Vote neg
Preparation and clash—changing the topic post facto manipulates
balance of prep, which structurally favors the aff because they speak last
and permute alternatives—strategic fairness is key to engaging a wellprepared opponent
Topical fairness requirements are key to effective dialogue and
deliberative discourse makes the discussion one-sided and subverts any
meaningful neg role.
Ryan Galloway 7, Samford Comm prof, Contemporary Argumentation and Debate, Vol.
28, 2007
Debate as a dialogue sets an argumentative table, where all parties receive a relatively fair opportunity to voice their
position. Anything that fails to allow participants to have their position articulated denies one side of the argumentative table a
fair hearing. The affirmative side is set by the topic and fairness requirements. While affirmative
teams have recently resisted affirming the topic, in fact, the topic selection process is rigorous, taking the relative ground of
each topic as its central point of departure.¶ Setting the affirmative reciprocally sets the negative. The
negative crafts approaches to the topic consistent with affirmative demands. The negative crafts disadvantages, counter-plans,
and critical arguments premised on the arguments that the topic allows for the affirmative team. According to fairness norms,
each side sits at a relatively balanced argumentative table.¶ When one side takes more than its share,
competitive
equity suffers. However, it also undermines the respect due to the other involved in the
dialogue. When one side excludes the other, it fundamentally denies the personhood of
the other participant (Ehninger, 1970, p. 110). A pedagogy of debate as dialogue takes this
respect as a fundamental component. A desire to be fair is a fundamental condition of a
dialogue that takes the form of a demand for equality of voice. Far from being a banal request for links to
a disadvantage, fairness is a demand for respect, a demand to be heard, a demand that a
voice backed by literally months upon months of preparation, research, and critical
thinking not be silenced.¶ Affirmative cases that suspend basic fairness norms operate to
exclude particular negative strategies. Unprepared, one side comes to the argumentative
table unable to meaningfully participate in a dialogue. They are unable to “understand what
‘went on…’” and are left to the whims of time and power (Farrell, 1985, p. 114). Hugh Duncan furthers
this line of reasoning:¶ Opponents not only tolerate but honor and respect each other because in
doing so they enhance their own chances of thinking better and reaching sound decisions.
Opposition is necessary because it sharpens thought in action. We assume that argument, discussion, and talk, among free an
informed people who subordinate decisions of any kind, because it is only through such
discussion that we
reach agreement which binds us to a common cause…If we are to be equal…relationships
among equals must find expression in many formal and informal institutions (Duncan, 1993, p.
196-197).¶ Debate compensates for the exigencies of the world by offering a framework
that maintains equality for the sake of the conversation (Farrell, 1985, p. 114).¶ For example, an
case on the 2007-2008 college topic might defend neither state nor international action in the
Middle East, and yet claim to be germane to the topic in some way. The case essentially denies
the arguments that state action is oppressive or that actions in the international arena are
philosophically or pragmatically suspect. Instead of allowing for the dialogue to be modified
by the interchange of the affirmative case and the negative response, the affirmative
subverts any meaningful role to the negative team, preventing them from offering
effective “counter-word” and undermining the value of a meaningful exchange of speech
acts. Germaneness and other substitutes for topical action do not accrue the
dialogical benefits of topical advocacy.
affirmative
Effective deliberative discourse is the lynchpin to solving all existential
social and political problems.
Lundberg, UNC Chapel Hill communications professor, 2010
(Christian, Tradition of Debate in North Carolina” in Navigating Opportunity: Policy Debate
in the 21st Century, pg 311-3)
The second major problem with the critique that identifies a naivety in articulating debate and democracy is that it presumes
that the primary pedagogical outcome of debate is speech capacities. But the
democratic capacities built by
debate are not limited to speech—as indicated earlier, debate builds capacity for critical thinking,
analysis of public claims, informed decision making, and better public judgment. If the
picture of modem political life that underwrites this critique of debate is a pessimistic view
of increasingly labyrinthine and bureaucratic administrative politics, rapid scientific and
technological change outpacing the capacities of the citizenry to comprehend them, and ever-expanding insular
special-interest- and money-driven politics, it is a puzzling solution, at best, to argue that
these conditions warrant giving up on debate. If democracy is open to rearticulation, it is open to
rearticulation precisely because as the challenges of modern political life proliferate, the citizenry's
capacities can change, which is one of the primary reasons that theorists of democracy such
as Ocwey in The Public awl Its Problems place such a high premium on education (Dewey 1988,63, 154).
Debate provides an indispensible form of education in the modem articulation of democracy because it builds
precisely the skills that allow the citizenry to research and be informed about policy
decisions that impact them, to sort through and evaluate the evidence for and relative merits of
arguments for and against a policy in an increasingly information-rich environment, and to
prioritize their time and political energies toward policies that matter the most to them. The
merits of debate as a tool for building democratic capacity-building take on a special
significance in the context of information literacy. John Larkin (2005, HO) argues that one of the
primary failings of modern colleges and universities is that they have not changed curriculum to
match with the challenges of a new information environment. This is a problem for the course
of academic study in our current context, but perhaps more important, argues Larkin, for the future of a citizenry
that will need to make evaluative choices against an increasingly complex and
multimediated information environment (ibid-). Larkin's study tested the benefits of debate participation on
information-literacy skills and concluded that in-class debate participants reported significantly higher self-efficacy ratings of
their ability to navigate academic search databases and to effectively search and use other Web resources: To analyze the
self-report ratings of the instructional and control group students, we first conducted a multivariate analysis of variance on all
of the ratings, looking jointly at the effect of instmction/no instruction and debate topic . . . that it
did not matter
which topic students had been assigned . . . students in the Instnictional [debate) group were significantly
more confident in their ability to access information and less likely to feel that they needed help to do so----These findings
clearly indicate greater self-efficacy for online searching among students who participated in (debate).... These results
constitute strong support for the effectiveness of the project on students' self-efficacy for online searching in the academic
databases. There was an unintended effect, however: After doing ... the project, instructional group students also felt more
confident than the other students in their ability to get good information from Yahoo and Google. It may be that the library
research experience increased self-efficacy for any searching, not just in academic databases. (Larkin 2005, 144) Larkin's
study substantiates Thomas Worthcn and Gaylcn Pack's (1992, 3) claim that debate in the college
classroom plays a critical role in fostering the kind of problem-solving skills demanded by the
increasingly rich media and information environment of modernity. Though their essay was written
in 1992 on the cusp of the eventual explosion of the Internet as a medium, Worthcn and Pack's framing of the issue was
prescient: the primary question facing today's student has changed from how to best research a topic to the crucial question of
learning how to best evaluate which arguments to cite and rely upon from an easily accessible and veritable cornucopia of
materials. There are, without a doubt, a number of important criticisms of employing debate as a model for democratic
deliberation. But cumulatively, the evidence
presented here warrants strong support for expanding
debate practice in the classroom as a technology for enhancing democratic deliberative capacities.
The unique combination of critical thinking skills, research and information processing
skills, oral communication skills, and capacities for listening and thoughtful, open
engagement with hotly contested issues argues for debate as a crucial component of a rich
and vital democratic life. In-class debate practice both aids students in achieving the best goals of college and
university education, and serves as an unmatched practice for creating thoughtful, engaged, openminded and self-critical students who are open to the possibilities of meaningful political
engagement and new articulations of democratic life. Expanding this practice is crucial, if
only because the more we produce citizens that can actively and effectively engage the
political process, the more likely we are to produce revisions of democratic life that are
necessary if democracy is not only to survive, but to thrive. Democracy faces a myriad of
challenges, including: domestic and international issues of class, gender, and racial justice;
wholesale environmental destruction and the potential for rapid climate change; emerging
threats to international stability in the form of terrorism, intervention and new possibilities for
great power conflict; and increasing challenges of rapid globalization including an increasingly
volatile global economic structure. More than any specific policy or proposal, an informed and active
citizenry that deliberates with greater skill and sensitivity provides one of the best hopes for
responsive and effective democratic governance, and by extension, one of the last best
hopes for dealing with the existential challenges to democracy [in an] increasingly complex world.
Simulated ocean debates inculcate agency and decision-making skills—
that enables activism and avoids cooption
NOAA 13 [NOAA, The Report of Ocean Exploration, 2020, A National Forum, 2013,
http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/oceanexploration2020/oe2020_report.pdf]
The solutions to the challenging issues facing our oceans—global warming, acidification,
over-fishing—require the right combination of strong science, informed policy, and
skilled engineering. However, there is one challenge (indeed, the grandest ocean challenge)
that doesn’t fit that formula: public engagement. Solving the ocean challenges require an
engaged and supportive public. A public that understands what is at stake, and can draw a
clear connection between ocean health and the health of their families and communities.
Unfortunately, the same tactics needed to address the pressing ocean issues also work to
cognitively erase that public connection with the ocean. The immensity of the ocean and its
corresponding challenges create a willful blindness among the public—it’s just too
overwhelming to comprehend, so people stop trying. The most effective way to build an
engaged and informed public is just the opposite. Instead of highlighting the problems, we
need now more than ever to use a positive approach to show what’s wonderful about our
oceans. We need to strengthen the public connection through positive association. From a
postive perspective, there’s no better tactic than ocean exploration. It taps into
everything that’s awe-inspiring about the ocean: its vastness, its mystery, its wonder. But it
also taps into everything that’s awe-inspiring about our humanity: our curiosity, our
ingenuity, our wonder. Public engagement is the highest imperative—every other issue
is derivative. People will only protect and pursue something in their field of awareness. We
need a direct emotional connection. Ocean exploration gives us the power to tell that story.
We must engage in state institutions in order to challenge colonialism
Mendoza 8 (Elva Fabiola Orozco, Master of Arts in Political Science, Borderlands Theory:
Producing Border Epistemologies with Gloria Anzaldua, April 24, 2008,
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-05062008175949/unrestricted/Final_thesis_corrected.pdf)
By making the struggle inner, Anzald˙a puts an excessive responsibility on the individual
herself in finding her liberation. Yet, since people experience freedom, or its absence, in the
public sphere, in the quest for liberation, the inner self has to realize that the struggle is not
only against the inner demons, fears, or traumas, but also against society and its social and
political institutions, i.e. the state and the economic sector. In this realm, it is important
to remember that identity construction is not an exclusive personal matter, but rather it
involves an individualís perception of herself and her interaction vis-‡-vis those against she
defines herself. In other words, since Borderlands theory attempts to liberate the self from
imposed identities, one needs to be clear that such liberation would not be possible if one
does not directly confront the structure of power that participate directly in shaping oneís
identity in one way or another. Thus, although Anzald˙a states that the struggle is to be
directed against the dominant culture (white males), Anzald˙a misses the opportunity to
challenge the institutions that the white culture created to institutionalize domination. In
doing so, Anzald˙a also misses the opportunity to challenge one of the most important
entities that creates, regulates, and promotes those institutions, namely, the state. The state
apparatus widely advanced the ideologies of the Monroe Doctrine, the Manifest Destiny, the
Proposition 187, etc. While commenting on Patchen Markellís Bound by Recognition,
Vazquez-Arroyo argues that: The state is frequently a constitutive actor in the politicization
of identity, either by its own logics of legitimation or by means of its role in the political
economy. It is not innocent to the managing and racialization of identities in capitalist
societies either. In fact, the recognition of its legitimacy often relies on the production and
management of differences (Vazquez-Arroyo, 2004: 9). Thus, if the state plays a prominent
role in politicizing identities, any theory or projects of resistance directed to change or
create a new identity needs not only to call accountable the figure state, but also to confront
it and seek to influence it in a direct form. It is through the state that domination is
legitimized and worked out even in the so-called democratic states. Stateís apparatuses
through their institutions, policies, rules, laws, etc., have an important participation in
determining what is legal and what is not, what is just and what is not and also whose rights
get to be protected and whose not. Consequently, in seeking significant freedom, it is
important to pay close attention to those political institutions that represent us and
critically evaluate their complicity in promoting the privilege or oppression of certain
groups. Thus, although I do consider the freedom of the self important, it is hard to argue
against Arendt on this point since the freedom of the colonized has been erased in the
public sphere, meaning that it is in the public space where freedom must be sought, fought,
and recuperated. In this vein, colonized people must not only resist domination, imposition
and the like. They must insert themselves in the city, in schools, in hospitals, in congresses,
in government offices, in bars, in galleries. In short, the colonized must exist in every single
place that claims to be public since it is there where freedom matters.
Case
The aff reading of the Filipino identity recreates the colonial
appropriation of the Tagalog language
**The way in which we discuss the Filipino identity and language in English is bad because
it a) misinterprets the filipino culture and b) Makes a colonial/white interpretation of an
entire culture
Fajardo 2011 (Kale Bantigue. associate professor of Asian/American studies at the
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. “Filipino Crosscurrents : Oceanographies of Seafaring,
Masculinities, and Globalization” University of Minnesota Press, 2011//RC)
According to Enriquez, Ileto, and Rafael, utang na loob has a history of being
mistranslated or appropriated, especially by colonial authorities, institutions, and
scholars, for conservative colonial or neocolonial agendas. Rather than stressing
gratitude or solidarity, neocolonial knowledge production has stressed notions of
indebtedness, hierarchy, and inequality. Enriquez, for one, shows how the concept was
misunderstood and misused by U.S. American researchers who were unfamiliar with
Philippine languages and cultural concepts. 20 He argues that utang na loob was
problematically overemphasized in scholarship, especially by white U.S. American
researchers, for example, Charles Kaut, who mistranslated and narrowly defined utang na
loob as a “debt of gratitude.” Enriquez argues that this narrow definition reinforces
neocolonial power¶ dynamics and a more “accommodative,” that is, a conservative
neocolonial understanding of Filipino/a psychocultural dynamics. Enriquez explains the
negative epistemological and psychological impacts of U.S. American colonial scholarship
related to the concept of utang na loob. I quote Enriquez’s important analysis at length
because he was the scholar who developed an early postcolonial or decolonized critique of
utang na loob: The problems with the token use of Filipino psychological concepts in
the context of a Western analysis that relies on the English language and English
categories of analysis are many. It no doubt can lead to the distortion of Philippine
social reality and the furtherance of the mis-education of the Filipinos. It is no
coincidence that Kaut (1961) hit upon utang na loob (debt of “gratitude”) as a key concept
for the analysis of Tagalog interpersonal relations, considering that utang na loob is just one
among many psychosocial concepts that relate to the theoretically fertile concept of loob.
We have sama ng loob (“resentment”), kusang loob (“initiative”), lakas ng loob (“guts”) and
many others. Samonte (1973) needed no less than three pages just to list down such
concepts. In addition, Kaut admitted that “debt of gratitude” is not altogether unknown in
Washington, D.C. Even Americans [sic] recognize utang na loob, they just happen to prefer
kaliwaan or immediate payoffs whenever possible. To argue that utang na loob is a Filipino
value is therefore misleading to say the least, and dangerous at best. Utang na loob would be
convenient in perpetuating the colonial status of the Filipino mind.
Notions of fluid boundaries are tool to co-opt indigenous land and
identity--- The aff proves an instance of trying to reappropriate squo
interpretations of identity
Grande 2000 (Sandy Grande. “American Indian Geographies of Power: At the Crossroads
of Indigena and Mestizaje.” Harvard Educational Review, 70:4. Winter 2000.)
The forces
of identity appropriation, cultural encroachment, and corporate commodification
pressure American Indian communities to employ essentialist tactics and construct
relatively fixed notions of identity, and to render the concepts of fluidity and transgression
highly problematic. It is evident from the examples above that the notion of fluid boundaries has never
worked to the advantage of Indigenous peoples: federal agencies have invoked the language
of fluid or unstable identities as the rationale for dismantling the structures of tribal life and
creating greater dependency on the U.S. government; Whitestream America has seized its
message to declare open season on Indians, thereby appropriating Native lands, culture,
spiritual practices, history, and literature; and Whitestream academics have now employed
the language of postmodern fluidity to unwittingly transmute centuries of war between Indigenous
peoples and their respective nation-states into a "genetic and cultural dialogue" (Valle & Torres,
1995, p. 141). Thus, in spite of its aspirations to social justice, the notion of a new cultural democracy based
on the ideal of mestizaje represents a rather ominous threat to American Indian communities.
Attaching suffering and certain experiences to identity creates a
negative framework for how we view people.
Smith 77 {Sharon, Sharon Smith is an American socialist writer and activist. She is the
author of Subterranean Fire: A History of Working-Class Radicalism in the United States and
Women and Socialism: Essays on Women’s Liberation “Black feminism and
intersectionality” http://isreview.org/issue/91/black-feminism-and-intersectionality}
Black legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality” in her
insightful 1989 essay, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black
Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist
Politics.”3 The concept of intersectionality is not an abstract notion but a description
of the way multiple oppressions are experienced. Indeed, Crenshaw uses the
following analogy, referring to a traffic intersection, or crossroad, to concretize the
concept: Consider an analogy to traffic in an intersection, coming and going in all four
directions. Discrimination, like traffic through an intersection, may flow in one
direction, and it may flow in another. If an accident happens in an intersection, it can
be caused by cars traveling from any number of directions and, sometimes, from all
of them. Similarly, if a Black woman is harmed because she is in an intersection, her
injury could result from sex discrimination or race discrimination. . . . But it is not
always easy to reconstruct an accident: Sometimes the skid marks and the injuries
simply indicate that they occurred simultaneously, frustrating efforts to determine
which driver caused the harm. Crenshaw argues that Black women are discriminated
against in ways that often do not fit neatly within the legal categories of either
“racism” or “sexism”—but as a combination of both racism and sexism. Yet the legal
system has generally defined sexism as based upon an unspoken reference to the injustices
confronted by all (including white) women, while defining racism to refer to those faced by
all (including male) Blacks and other people of color. This framework frequently renders
Black women legally “invisible” and without legal recourse. Crenshaw describes
several employment discrimination-based lawsuits to illustrate how Black women’s
complaints often fall between the cracks precisely because they are discriminated
against both as women and as Blacks. The ruling in one such case, DeGraffenreid v.
General Motors, filed by five Black women in 1976, demonstrates this point vividly.
Attempts to alleviate suffering with the focus on identity recreates
makes pain/suffering more likely
Brown 93 (Wendy, Professor at University of California – Santa Cruz, “Wounded
Attachments,” Political Theory, Vol 21, No 3, August 93, JSTOR)
Enter politicized identity, now conceivable in part as both product of and "reaction" to this
condition, where "reaction" acquires the meaning that Nietzsche ascribed to it, namely, as an
effect of domination that reiterates impotence, a substitute for action, for power, for selfaffirmation that reinscribes incapacity, powerlessness, and rejection. For Nietzsche, ressentiment
itself is rooted in "reaction"—the substitution of reasons, norms, and ethics for deeds—and
not only moral systems but identities themselves take their bearings in this reaction. As Tracy
Strong reads this element of Nietzsche's thought, Identity . . . does not consist of an active
component, but is a reaction to something outside; action in itself, with its inevitable selfassertive qualities, must then become something evil, since it is identified with that against
which one is reacting. The will to power of slave morality must constantly reassert that which
gives definition to the slave: the pain he suffers by being in the world. Hence any attempt to
escape that pain will merely result in the reaffirmation of painful structures. 21 If
ressentiment's "cause" is suffering, its "creative deed" is the reworking of this pain into a
negative form of action, the "imaginary revenge" of what Nietzsche terms "natures denied
the true reaction, that of deeds." 22 This revenge is achieved through the imposition of
suffering "on whatever does not feel wrath and displeasure as he does"' (accomplished especially
through the production of guilt), through the establishment of suffering as the measure of social
virtue, and through casting strength and good fortune ("privilege" as we say today) as selfrecriminating, as its own indictment in a culture of suffering: "it is disgraceful to be fortunate,
there is too much misery."' But in its attempt to displace its suffering, identity structured by
ressentiment at the same time becomes invested in its own subjection. This investment lies not
only in its discovery of a site of blame for its hurt will, not only in its acquisition of
recognition through its history of subjection (a recognition predicated on injury, now
righteously revalued), but also in the satisfactions of revenge that ceaselessly reenact even as
they redistribute the injuries of marginalization and subordination in a liberal discursive order that
alternately denies the very possibility of these things or blames those who experience them for
their own condition. Identity politics structured by ressentiment reverses without subverting this
blaming structure: it does not subject to critique the sovereign subject of accountability that
liberal individualism presupposes nor the economy of inclusion and exclusion that liberal
universalism establishes. Thus politicized identity that presents itself as a self-affirmation now
appears as the opposite, as predicated on and requiring its sustained rejection by a "hostile
external world."25 Insofar as what Nietzsche calls slave morality produces identity in
reaction to power, insofar as identity rooted in this reaction achieves its moral superiority by
reproaching power and action themselves as evil, identity structured by this ethos becomes deeply
invested in its own impotence, even while it seeks to assuage the pain of its powerlessness
through its vengeful moralizing, through its wide distribution of suffering, through its
reproach of power as such. Politicized identity, premised on exclusion and fueled by the
humiliation and suffering imposed by its historically structured impotence in the context of a
discourse of sovereign individuals, is as likely to seek generalized political paralysis, to feast on
generalized political impotence, as it is to seek its own or collective liberation. Indeed it is more
likely to punish and reproach—"punishment is what revenge calls itself; with a hypocritical
lie it creates a good conscience for itself'—than to find venues of self-affirming action."
Identifying trauma results in policing of identity – turns the AFF
Brown 05
[Wendy, prof. of poly sci @ UC Berkeley, Edgework: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Politics, pg. 9193)
Though this kind of regulatory function is familiar enough to students of legal and
bureaucratic discourse, it is less frequently recognized and perhaps more disquieting in
putatively countercultural discourse, when confessing injury can become that which
attaches us to the injury, paralyzes us within it, and prevents us from seeking or even
desiring a status other than that of injured. In an age of social identification through
attributes marked as culturally significant.— gender, race, sexuality- and so forth—
confessional discourse, with its truth-bearing status in a postepistemological universe,
not only regulates the confessor in the name of freeing her, as Foucault described that
logic, but extends beyond the confessing individual to constitute a regulatory truth
about the identity group: confessed truths are assembled and deployed as “knowledge”
about the group. This phenomenon would seem to undergird a range of recurring troubles
in feminism, from the “real woman” rejoinder to poststructuralist deconstructions of her to
totalizing descriptions of women’s experience that are the inadvertent effects of various
kinds of survivor stories. Thus, for example, the porn star who feels miserably exploited,
violated, and humiliated in her work invariably monopolizes the feminist truth about sex
work, as the girl with math anxieties constitutes the feminist truth about women and math;
eating disorders have become the feminist truth about women and food, as sexual abuse
and violation occupy the feminist knowledge terrain of women and sexuality In other
words, even as feminism aims to affirm diversity among women and women’s experiences,
confession as the site of production of truth, converging with feminist suspicion and
de-authorization of truth from other sources, tends to reinstate a unified discourse in
which the story of greatest suffering becomes the true story of woman. (This may constitute part of the rhetorical purchase of confessional discourse in a postfoundational
epistemological era: confession substitutes for the largely discredited charge of false
consciousness, on the one hand, and for generalized truth claims rooted in science, God, or
nature on the other.) Thus, the adult who does not manifestly suffer from her or his
childhood sexual experience, the lesbian who does not feel shame, the woman of
color who does not primarily or “correctly” identify with her marking as such—these
figures are excluded as bona fide members of the identity categories that also claim
them. Their status within these discourses is that of being “in denial,” of suffering
from “false consciousness,” or of being a “race traitor.” This is the norm-making
process in traditions of “breaking silence,” which, ironically silence and exclude the
very persons these traditions mean to empower.While these practices tacitly silence
those who do not share the experiences of those whose suffering is most marked (or
whom the discourse produces as suffering markedly), they also condemn those whose
sufferings they record to a permanent identification with that suffering. Here, there is
a temporal ensnaring in “the folds of our own discourses” insofar as our manner of
identifying ourselves in speech condemns us to live in a present dominated by the
past. But what if speech and silence aren’t really opposites? Indeed, what if to speak incessantly of one’s suffering is to silence the possibilities of overcoming it, of living
beyond it, of identifying as something other than it? What if this incessant speech
overwhelms not only the experiences of others but also alternative (unutterable,
traumatized, fragmentary, or unassimilable) zones of one’s own experience? Conversely,
what if a certain modality of silence about one’s suffering—and we might consider
modalities of silence to be as varied as modalities of speech—articulates a variety of
possibilities not otherwise available to the sufferer?
Speaking for others disavows personal responsibility through the
invisibility of the role of the intellectual producing these archives.
Creates a heroic savior context that recreates the erasure of
marginalized voices.
Halberstam 11
Jack "The Queer Art of Failure" Duke Univ. Press Professor of English and Director of The
Center for Feminist Research at University of Southern California. (MI)
Spivak explores the British attempt in 1829 to abolish Hindu widow¶ burning in relation to the self- representation of
colonialism as benevolent¶ intervention and places this argument against the claim advanced by ¶ nativist Indians that sati
must be respected as a practice because these¶ women who lost their husbands actually wanted to die. She uses sati to¶
illustrate her claim that colonialism articulates itself as “white men¶ saving brown women from brown men,” but also to mark
the complicity¶ of Western feminism in this formulation. In a move that echoes Spivak’s¶ counterintuitive break from even
poststructuralist feminisms, Mahmood¶ explores women in the mosque movement and their commitment to piety ¶ in order to
ask, “Does
the category of resistance impose a teleology of¶ progressive politics on the
analytics of power—a teleology that makes it¶ hard for us to see and understand forms of
being and action that are not¶ necessarily encapsulated by the narrative of subversion and
reinscription¶ of norms?” (2005: 9).¶ “Can the Subaltern Speak?” sets up a contradiction
between different¶ modes of representation within which an intellectual proposes to speak¶
for an oppressed other. Spivak accuses Foucault and Deleuze as well as¶ Western feminism
of sneaking a heroic individualism in the back door of¶ discursive critique. “Neither Deleuze
nor Foucault,” she writes, “seems¶ aware that the intellectual within socialized capital,
brandishing concrete¶ experience, can help consolidate the international division of labor”¶
(1988: 275). For Spivak, intellectuals, like poststructuralist feminist theorists¶ for Mahmood, by
imagining themselves to be a transparent vector¶ for the exposure of ideological
contradictions, cannot account for their¶ own impact on the processes of domination and
instead always imagine¶ themselves in the heroic place of the individual who knows better
than¶ the oppressed masses about whom they theorize. The very notion of representation,¶
Spivak claims, in terms of both a theory of economic exploitation¶ and an ideological function,
depends upon the production of¶ “heroes, paternal proxies and agents of power” (279) and
harbors “the¶ possibility that the intellectual is complicit in the persistent constitution¶ of
the Other as the self’s shadow” (280).¶
The generational transmission of the affirmative is a disciplinary move
that invests in heteronormative whiteness.
Halberstam 11
Jack "The Queer Art of Failure" Duke Univ. Press Professor of English and Director of The
Center for Feminist Research at University of Southern California. (MI)
In chapter 2 I proposed forgetfulness as an interruption to generational¶ modes of
transmission that ensure the continuity of¶ ideas, family lines, and normativity itself. While
generational¶ logics and temporalities extend the status quo in a way that favors¶
dominant groups, generationality for oppressed groups can also indicate a different kind of
history, a history associated with¶ loss and debt. In relation to the lineage of an African
America that begins in slavery, Saidiya Hartman in Lose Your Mother suggests, “The only
sure inheritance passed from one generation to the next was this loss and it defined the
tribe. A philosopher had¶ once described it as an identity produced by negation” (2008:¶ 103).
Hartman’s title indicates a loss that has always already¶ happened for African Americans,
but it also argues against a simple genealogical¶ account of history that stretches back in
time through the family¶ line. Losing one’s mother, as we saw in relation to Finding Nemo and 50¶ First
Dates, is not simply “careless,” as Oscar Wilde might say; it actually¶ enables a relation to other
models of time, space, place, and connection.¶ Beginning with the injunction “Lose your mother” and building¶
toward a conclusion that will advocate a complete dismantling of self, I¶ explore a feminist politics that issues
not from a doing but from an undoing,¶ not from a being or becoming women but from a
refusal to be or¶ to become woman as she has been defined and imagined within Western¶
philosophy. I will trace broken mother- daughter bonds toward an¶ anti- Oedipal feminism that is nonetheless not a
Deleuzean body without¶ organs. This feminism, a feminism grounded in negation, refusal, passivity, ¶ absence, and silence,
offers spaces and modes of unknowing, failing,¶ and forgetting as part of an alternative feminist project, a shadow ¶ feminism
which has nestled in more positivist accounts and unraveled¶ their logics from within. This shadow feminism speaks in the
language¶ of self- destruction, masochism, an antisocial femininity, and a refusal of¶ the essential bond of mother and daughter
that ensures that the daughter¶ inhabits the legacy of the mother and in doing so reproduces her relationship ¶ to patriarchal
forms of power.¶ The tension between memory and forgetting as explored in chapter 3 ¶ tends to be distinctly Oedipal, familial,
and generational. Are there other¶ models of generation, temporality, and politics available to queer culture ¶ and feminism?
The Oedipal frame has stifled all kinds of other models¶ for thinking about the evolution of feminist and queer politics. From ¶
women’s studies professors who think of their students as “daughters”¶ to next wave feminists who see earlier activists as
dowdy and antiquated¶ mothers, Oedipal
dynamics and their familial metaphors snuff out the¶
potential future of new knowledge formations. Many women’s studies¶ departments around
the country currently struggle with the messy and¶ even ugly legacy of Oedipal models of
generationality. In some of these¶ departments the Oedipal dynamics are also racialized and sexualized, and¶ so an older
generation of mostly white women might be simultaneously¶ hiring and holding at bay a younger generation of (often queer)
women¶ of color. The
whole model of “passing down” knowledge from mother¶ to daughter is
quite clearly invested in white, gendered, and hetero normativity;¶ indeed the system
inevitably stalls in the face of these racialized¶ and heterosexualized scenes of difference.
And while the “mothers”¶ become frustrated with the apparent unwillingness of the women
they¶ have hired to continue their line of inquiry, the “daughters” struggle to¶ make the older
women see that regulatory systems are embedded in the¶ paradigms they so insistently
want to pass on. The pervasive model of¶ women’s studies as a mother- daughter dynamic
ironically resembles¶ patriarchal systems in that it casts the mother as the place of history,
tradition,¶ and memory and the daughter as the inheritor of a static system¶ which she must either accept without changing or
reject completely.¶ While Virginia Woolf’s famous line about women from A Room of One’s ¶ Own, “We think back through our
mothers if we are women,” has been¶ widely interpreted as the founding statement of a new aesthetic lineage¶ that passes
through the mother and not the father, the crucial point of¶ the formulation is the conditional phrase (1929: 87). In fact “if we
are¶ women” implies that if we do not think back through our mothers, then ¶ we are not women, and this broken line of
thinking and unbeing of the¶ woman unexpectedly offers a way out of the reproduction of woman as ¶ the other to man from
one generation to the next. The texts that I examine ¶ in this chapter refuse to think back through the mother; they
actively¶ and passively lose the mother, abuse the mother, love, hate, and destroy¶ the
mother, and in the process they produce a theoretical and imaginative¶ space that is “not
woman” or that can be occupied only by unbecoming¶ women.
Intersectional approaches to identity result in the social death of
blackness – Cuba proves
Allen 11 (Jafari S. Assistant Professor of African American Studies and Anthropology at
Yale University “Venceremos? The erotic of black self-making in cuba” //RC)
Jose Marti, the intellectual hero of Cuban independence, invoked the biological truth that
there is no such thing as "race" in order to present a "colorblind" vision in his Our Americas.
While this vision is often uncritically embraced as antiracist, so-called colorblindness must
be examined more thoroughly. Marti's vision elides historical differences and sets up
formidable barriers against claims of racism or colorism. As he wrote, "There can be no
racial animosity, because there are no races" (1891: 93). Thus the denial of "race" and
conditional inclusion was one of the rhetorical linchpins of the Cuba Libre (Cuban
independence) movement. In Cuba, mestizaje (more appropriately, whitening) became the
established ideology of nationalists because it could accrue to Afro-Cubans a measure of
belonging-that is, recognizing their crucial role in winning the war to end Spanish
colonialism, while maintaining the status quo of European Creole (structurally white)
control. As Aline Helg (1995), Alejandro de la Fuente (2001), Ada Ferrer (1999a), and
others have already shown, for black and other Cuban patriots of color who had fought hard
for their own emancipation and the independence of Cuba, the terms of the past were
certainly not acceptable. But in lieu of liberation and full equality, they were offered Jose
Marti's vision of a "raceless" (i.e., "mestizo") Cuba. For people of color, equality was tied to
questions of merit, virtue, patriotism, and education, while value was assumed a priori for
Peninsulares and Creoles. Yet, even in the absence of equality, Cuban nationalism held that
blacks "should be grateful for the abolition of slavery and recognize the great sacrifices that
whites ... had made to `liberate' them" (de la Fuente 2001: 29). This is prescient perhaps of
current race debates in the United States, Brazil, and other places on the appropriateness of
measures like affirmative action that are meant as reparative gestures for the effects of
slavery and systematic racism. Following the social Darwinism and positivism then in
vogue, the "race problem" was a problem of the person of color who, the reasoning goes,
had been liberated from slavery by the altruism of wealthy white people. Thus, race and
racism could not be talked about as a social issue but rather a cultural one-namely, a
problem of innate "ethnic instincts" and aesthetic perceptions that time would correct
through "indirect" and "gradual" means of mestizaje.' That is, in order to work, whitening
must involve the (at least) social death of blackness. The massacre of 1912 that resulted in
somewhere between five to six thousand actual deaths during a racial siege at the hands of
Cuban soldiers, is evidence that the death of black(ness) is not merely a metaphor.8 Having
gained little ground with a national government that offered only token inclusion, the
Partido Independiente de Color (People of Color Party) and other groups of blacks
advocated supporting separate institutions and movements that would ensure a "rightful
share" for Cubans of color, and sought to end United States intervention in Cuba. Helg
demonstrates that this "Afro-Cuban consciousness and autonomous challenge incited the
white elite to make more explicit the ideology of white supremacy" (1995:16), which was
expressed through various means including this heinous crime. In order to prevent the
Partido Independiente de Color from participating in elections and thereby forcing
recognition of their issues, black supporters were massacred. This bears repetition.
Organized people of color who dared challenge the prevailing racial hegemony were killed.
Helg provides exhaustive historical context and detail, for this issue; my aim here is merely
to place black Cubans' continued consumption of pre-revolutionary rhetorics of inclusion in
the context of racial terror and racial trauma. Helg quotes the daily newspaper El dia's
account of the massacre from May 26, 1912: This [demonstration by Independista
supporters] is a racist uprising, an uprising of blacks, in other words, an enormous and a
common danger... conceived as black as hatred.... They do not have any purpose.... Driven by
atavistic, brutal instincts and passions: they devote themselves to robbery, pillage, murder,
and rape. These are, in all parts and latitudes of the world, the characteristics of race
struggles.... Cuban society ... with its ... Spanish civilization ... prospects of wonderful,
splendid civilization is getting ready to defend itself against barbarism ... this is the free and
beautiful America defending herself against a clawing scratch from Africa. (Quoted in Helg
1995: 196) The trauma visited upon black Cubans does not diminish. Racial terror does not
end with the abolition of slavery or throughout the pre-revolutionary period. Racial terror
is extended through symbolic violence. As Helg states: If the myth of racial equality helped
to keep Afro-Cubans in check, it was not sufficient to stir the white population into active
repression of nonconformist Afro-Cubans. Racism needs the support of caricatures and
distortions ... therefore, efficient icons of fear are drawn from deeply rooted racial and
sexual stereotypes [including] ... the Haitian Revolution ... [and the] caricature of the black
brujo and nanigo ... [which] embodied in the male image of the black beast and the black
rapist of white women and in the image of a black mulata seductress. (1995: 18) Sadly, the
legacies of slavery and the pre-revolutionary era are evident in the contemporary lived
experiences of the entire population. It is extant in the rhetorics of so-called inclusion that
find blacks to be bestial, insolent, hypersexual objects who, if not already sufficiently mixed,
are eminently expendable. Cuba seems to have been struck not only (color) blind but also
dumb-silencing race and thereby reinscribing racial terror. Cuba has been loath to address
"the race question" and is therefore currently ill equipped to deal with the particular
material and psychic trauma in lived black experience. If we are going to talk about moving
beyond or ameliorating racial inequality or "improving race relations" in the Americas, then
transatlantic chattel slavery, postemancipation racial terror, and continued racial trauma
and material disenfranchisement must form a large part of the background against which
we take up these issues. Otherwise, mestizaje and other ideologies of mixing are rendered
as innocuous, or worse, utopic, visions of Our Americas and beyond: free and beautiful
America defending herself against a clawing scratch from Africa. Gender, racial, and sexual
hegemonies are constituted by national elites and disseminated to the masses as innocuous
and stable "Cuban culture" that carries the force of "nature." The shift from severely
controlled and ordered difference to the revolution's attempt at erasure of difference was in
fact discursively sleight in Cuba-that is, shifting political ideologies while leaving racial and
sexual ideologies firmly in place. Of course, the ideologies through which these hegemonies
are announced are found throughout the Americas; for example, as evidenced in current
debates on racial pluralism or multiculturalism in Brazil and Nicaragua. According to Peter
Wade (2001), there is a tendency to look at twentieth-century history in Latin America as a
move from nationalist modernist homogeneity that erased or severely controlled difference
to a sort of postmodern multicultural heterogeneity; a move that he rightly asserts is forced
in large part by the counterhegemonic tactics of oppressed minorities, particularly racial
and ethnic minorities. Premature calls to universalism, official multiculturalism, and
discourses on diversity and multiculturalism in the Americas most often cloak within their
high-sounding platitudes of cooperation the erasure of blackness itself, or at least the rights,
citizenship, or autonomy claims of those who are less mixed than others. Oh, how our blood
is lost. This has by now been well elaborated in a number of works, including Abdias do
Nascimento's Brazil: Mixture or Massacre? (1989). Thus, we do not aspire to render yet
another expose of the fact that "racial mixture," mestizaje (or mesticagem, in Portuguese),
does not preclude racism in Latin America, or perhaps more controversial, that there are
not or have not historically been synchronous whitening projects in the United States. But a
short review is in order because these myths continue to persist.
2NC FW extension
Overview
b. Interpretation and violation – the affirmative should defend the
desirability of topical government action
Extend the Ericson evidence—USFG should requires government action means they don’t
meet
Deliberation O/W and turns all their DAs.
Without deliberation we cannot have a debate—it is just one team
talking at the other. That kills education because no one comes out of
the round knowing more then when they came in. Lundberg evidence
says that deliberation is the only way to solve real world problems
because it leads to real life decision-making skills
Turns all of their offense because we can never really learn about
Filipino/Filipina people without really discussing.
Our interp solves all of their offense because they could have had the
USFG explore the connection between Filipino/Filipina people and the
ocean. Means that we don’t actually exclude them at all they just exclude
us to get out of any deliberation
Dialogue/Deliberation
Extend the Steinberg and Freeley ev—Without deliberation we cant actually decide
anything. It just becomes a debate of competing truth claims.
Even if the content of the affirmative is valuable, the process they
endorse is not. Debating the topic challenges students to articulate and
defend positions grounded in the best evidence for and against the
proposition. Knowledge of the topic increases depth of inquiry and
quality of evaluation.
Lundberg 10 — Christian O. Lundberg, Associate Professor of Rhetoric in the
Department of Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from Northwestern University, 2010 (“The Allred
Initiative and Debate Across the Curriculum: Reinventing the Tradition of Debate at North
Carolina,” Navigating Opportunity: Policy Debate in the 21st Century, Edited by Allan D.
Louden, Published by the International Debate Education Association, ISBN
9781617700293, p. 299)
Part of the benefit of debate in this regard is that more
than simply fostering student engagement with
the curricula by incentivizing mastery of the material and engendering a cooperative
learning environment, debate practices also facilitate the application of course material to
students’ everyday lives (Kennedy 2007, 183; Martens 2005, 4). Debate practice is uniquely effective
in fostering application because it demands that a student have a relatively comprehensive
grasp of a subject area, but, more important, that they articulate a position relative to the
issues in the debate, and evaluate the competing claims that they might make in
relation to the strength of the evidence that supports them (Schuster and Meany 2005). Thus,
debate practices foster not only engagement with an issue but also an evaluation of a
student’s position relative to an issue in the light of the best arguments for and against a
proposition. Debate offers privileged access not only to content mastery, or even opinion
formation, but what is more important is that it bridges the gap between the theoretical
knowledge inculcated in the classroom and the specific personal stands that one might
take both toward a specific resolution and, more broadly, toward the critical argumentative
connections that a given resolution for debate accesses. Debate then has the potential to
create a depth of inquiry and evaluation relative to the classroom curriculum that is
unparalleled both in terms of knowledge of a subject area, and perhaps more
significantly, in terms of a set of owned investments relative to the propositions at hand.
Unbridled affirmation outside the game space makes research
impossible and destroys dialogue in debate
Hanghoj 8
http://static.sdu.dk/mediafiles/Files/Information_til/Studerende_ved_SDU/Din_uddannelse/phd_hum/afhandlinger/2009/ThorkilHanghoej.pd
f Thorkild Hanghøj, Copenhagen, 2008 Since this PhD project began in 2004, the present author has been affiliated with DREAM (Danish
Research Centre on Education and Advanced Media Materials), which is located at the Institute of Literature, Media and Cultural Studies at the
University of Southern Denmark. Research visits have taken place at the Centre for Learning, Knowledge, and Interactive Technologies (L-KIT),
the Institute of Education at the University of Bristol and the institute formerly known as Learning Lab Denmark at the School of Education,
University of Aarhus, where I currently work as an assistant professor.
Debate games are often based on pre-designed scenarios that include descriptions of issues
to be debated, educational goals, game goals, roles, rules, time frames etc. In this way,
debate games differ from textbooks and everyday classroom instruction as debate scenarios
allow teachers and students to actively imagine, interact and communicate within a
domain-specific game space. However, instead of mystifying debate games as a “magic
circle” (Huizinga, 1950), I will try to overcome the epistemological dichotomy between
“gaming” and “teaching” that tends to dominate discussions of educational games. In short,
educational gaming is a form of teaching. As mentioned, education and games represent two
different semiotic domains that both embody the three faces of knowledge: assertions,
modes of representation and social forms of organisation (Gee, 2003; Barth, 2002; cf.
chapter 2). In order to understand the interplay between these different domains and their
interrelated knowledge forms, I will draw attention to a central assumption in Bakhtin’s
dialogical philosophy. According to Bakhtin, all forms of communication and culture are
subject to centripetal and centrifugal forces (Bakhtin, 1981). A centripetal force is the drive
to impose one version of the truth, while a centrifugal force involves a range of possible
truths and interpretations. This means that any form of expression involves a duality of
centripetal and centrifugal forces: “Every concrete utterance of a speaking subject serves as
a point where centrifugal as well as centripetal forces are brought to bear” (Bakhtin, 1981:
272). If we take teaching as an example, it is always affected by centripetal and centrifugal
forces in the on-going negotiation of “truths” between teachers and students. In the words
of Bakhtin: “Truth is not born nor is it to be found inside the head of an individual person, it
is born between people collectively searching for truth, in the process of their dialogic
interaction” (Bakhtin, 1984a: 110). Similarly, the dialogical space of debate games also
embodies centrifugal and centripetal forces. Thus, the election scenario of The Power Game
involves centripetal elements that are mainly determined by the rules and outcomes of the
game, i.e. the election is based on a limited time frame and a fixed voting procedure.
Similarly, the open-ended goals, roles and resources represent centrifugal elements and
create virtually endless possibilities for researching, preparing, presenting, debating and
evaluating a variety of key political issues. Consequently, the actual process of enacting a
game scenario involves a complex negotiation between these centrifugal/centripetal forces
that are inextricably linked with the teachers and students’ game activities. In this way, the
enactment of The Power Game is a form of teaching that combines different pedagogical
practices (i.e. group work, web quests, student presentations) and learning resources (i.e.
websites, handouts, spoken language) within the interpretive frame of the election scenario.
Obviously, tensions may arise if there is too much divergence between educational goals
and game goals. This means that game facilitation requires a balance between focusing too
narrowly on the rules or “facts” of a game (centripetal orientation) and a focusing too
broadly on the contingent possibilities and interpretations of the game scenario (centrifugal
orientation). For Bakhtin, the duality of centripetal/centrifugal forces often manifests itself
as a dynamic between “monological” and “dialogical” forms of discourse. Bakhtin illustrates
this point with the monological discourse of the Socrates/Plato dialogues in which the
teacher never learns anything new from the students, despite Socrates’ ideological claims to
the contrary (Bakhtin, 1984a). Thus, discourse becomes monologised when “someone who
knows and possesses the truth instructs someone who is ignorant of it and in error”, where “a
thought is either affirmed or repudiated” by the authority of the teacher (Bakhtin, 1984a: 81).
In contrast to this, dialogical pedagogy fosters inclusive learning environments that are able
to expand upon students’ existing knowledge and collaborative construction of “truths”
(Dysthe, 1996). At this point, I should clarify that Bakhtin’s term “dialogic” is both a
descriptive term (all utterances are per definition dialogic as they address other utterances
as parts of a chain of communication) and a normative term as dialogue is an ideal to be
worked for against the forces of “monologism” (Lillis, 2003: 197-8). In this project, I am
mainly interested in describing the dialogical space of debate games. At the same time, I
agree with Wegerif that “one of the goals of education, perhaps the most important goal,
should be dialogue as an end in itself” (Wegerif, 2006: 61).
Ocean Literacy Key
Noaa evidence talks about how ocean education is key because of the major challenges
facing our oceans.
Debates about the assigned topic foster scientific literacy and citizen
engagement. Refusing to participate in debates about ocean policy
leaves us unprepared to confront the daunting challenges facing the
global climate and ecosystems. It is important for ocean policy to be
included in the curriculum.
Steffen 10 — Peg Steffen, Education Coordinator in the Communications and Education
Division of the National Ocean Service at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, holds a bachelor’s degree in zoology and a master’s in curriculum and
instruction, 2010 (“Education Around Earth – Ocean Literacy for a Blue Planet,” earthZine—
a publication of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, March 22nd, Available
Online at http://www.earthzine.org/2010/03/22/education-around-earth-ocean-literacyfor-a-blue-planet/, Accessed 07-02-2014)
“How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.” — Arthur C. Clarke All life
is dependent
on the ocean. It covers more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, is the source of most life
on Earth, regulates our weather and climate, provides most of our oxygen, and feeds much
of the human population. In spite of its importance, ocean and aquatic sciences remain
among the most underrepresented disciplines in K–12 educational curricula. Rarely
taught at any level, concepts about the ocean, the coasts or the Great Lakes infrequently appear in
K–12 curriculum materials, textbooks, assessments or standards . The National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) is working to help educators bring ocean sciences into the classroom.
Ocean literacy and science education are important to NOAA not only because the agency needs
experienced and talented scientists to fulfill its mission, but because every individual across the nation,
whether living in a coastal or inland state, affects and is affected by, the oceans and atmosphere —
everyday. NOAA’s mission is to serve the nation’s need for oceanic and atmospheric
information, but doing so also means helping to ensure that the general public
understands how ocean, coastal and climate science impacts their daily lives and future
prosperity. Society needs citizens who know how to apply science knowledge in their
careers and in their engagement as active members of their communities. Future
changes will bring economic and environmental challenges as well as opportunities, and
citizens who are ocean and climate literate will be better prepared to respond. To
protect fragile ecosystems and to build sustainable communities that are resilient to climate
change—including extreme weather and climate events—a science literate citizenry is essential.
Children in particular need to be engaged in ocean, coastal and climate science and NOAA
has produced a wide array of resources and programs for students and professional
development training for educators. The online resources and field experiences described below are just a few of
the opportunities offered by NOAA’s education programs.
They’ll say that their affirmative accesses this impact because it has
something to do with the ocean, but this isn’t good enough. Ocean
literacy requires rigorous training in fundamental concepts — only
season-long engagement with the assigned topic will cut it.
Dove 11 — Alistair Dove, Director of Research and Conservation at Georgia Aquarium in
Atlanta, former Curator of Aquatic Animal Health at the New York Aquarium, serves as an
adjunct faculty member at the University of Georgia, Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine,
Stony Brook University, and Savannah State College, holds a Ph.D. in Zoology and
Parasitology from the University of Queensland (Australia), 2011 (“Promoting Ocean
Literacy – a DSN Core Value,” Deep Sea News—a collaborate science blog about the oceans,
December 22nd, Available Online at http://deepseanews.com/2011/12/promoting-oceanliteracy-a-dsn-core-value/, Accessed 07-02-2014)
When the DSN crew gathered for our inaugural retreat recently, one of
the core values we agreed on was
“promoting ocean literacy”. This value is something that just about everyone in marine
science agrees on (example, example, example), but what does it really mean? Marine scientists and marine educators
have an intuitive sense of what ocean literacy is. It doesn’t mean that everyone has to have read Moby Dick (although its a
bloody good read). Rather, ocean literacy means
the public understands the fundamental
concepts of marine science, how we affect the oceans, and how they affect us. An ocean
literate public is one where, when news or events occur that are relevant to the oceans, they
can understand the implications for the seas, for humanity and for the world as a whole,
and are engaged both intellectually and behaviourally. OK great, so how should we achieve this and,
specifically, how can we as “scientist communicators” at DSN help this process?
* DSN = Deep Sea News, a collaborative science blog about the oceans
Public advocacy of environmental problems is key to change
governmental policy---individual change insufficient
CAG 10—Climate Change Communication Advisory Group. Dr Adam Corner School of Psychology, Cardiff University - Dr
Tom Crompton Change Strategist, WWF-UK - Scott Davidson Programme Manager, Global Action Plan - Richard Hawkins
Senior Researcher, Public Interest Research Centre - Professor Tim Kasser, Psychology department, Knox College, Galesburg,
Illinois, USA. - Dr Renee Lertzman, Center for Sustainable Processes & Practices, Portland State University, US. - Peter Lipman,
Policy Director, Sustrans. - Dr Irene Lorenzoni, Centre for Environmental Risk, University of East Anglia. - George Marshall,
Founding Director, Climate Outreach , Information Network - Dr Ciaran Mundy, Director, Transition Bristol - Dr Saffron O’Neil,
Department of Resource Management and Geography, University of Melbourne, Australia. - Professor Nick Pidgeon, Director,
Understanding Risk Research Group, School of Psychology, Cardiff University. - Dr Anna Rabinovich, School of Psychology,
University of Exeter - Rosemary Randall, Founder and director of Cambridge Carbon Footprint - Dr Lorraine Whitmarsh,
School of Psychology, Cardiff University & Visiting Fellow at the, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. (Communicating
climate change to mass public audience, http://pirc.info/downloads/communicating_climate_mass_audiences.pdf)
This
paper
¶
focus is not upon motivating small private-sphere behavioural changes on a piece-meal
basis Rather, it marshals evidence about how best to motivate the
systemic
behavioural change necessary including, crucially greater public engagement with
the policy process
¶ Political leaders
short advisory
collates a set of recommendations about how best to shape mass public communications aimed at increasing concern about climate change and motivating commensurate behavioural changes.
.
ambitious and
that is
–
,
(through, for example, lobbying decision-makers and elected representatives, or participating in demonstrations), as well as major lifestyle changes.
Its
have drawn attention to the imperative for more vocal public pressure to create the
‘political space’ for them to enact more ambitious policy interventions
individuals making small private-sphere behavioural changes
do not,
represent a proportional response to
climate
Don’t be distracted by the myth that ‘every little helps’. If everyone
does a little, we’ll achieve only a little
¶ The task of
communicators
must
be to motivate
active demand for – ambitious new policy interventions ¶
themselves
. 1 While this paper does not dismiss the
value of
clear that such behaviours
(for example, adopting simple domestic energy efficiency measures) it is
in themselves,
the challenge of
change. As David MacKay, Chief Scientific Advisor to
the UK Department of Energy and Climate change writes: “
” (MacKay, 2008).
business and non-governmental organisations
therefore
campaigners and
from government,
both (i) widespread adoption of ambitious private-sphere behavioural changes; and (ii) widespread acceptance of – and indeed
.
Current public communication campaigns, as orchestrated by government, business
and non-governmental organisations, are not achieving these changes. This paper asks: how should such communications be designed if they are to have optimal impact in motivating these changes? The response to this question will require fundamental
changes in the ways that many climate change communication campaigns are currently devised and implemented. ¶ This advisory paper offers a list of principles that could be used to enhance the quality of communication around climate change
communications. The authors are each engaged in continuously sifting the evidence from a range of sub-disciplines within psychology, and reflecting on the implications of this for improving climate change communications. Some of the organisations
that we represent have themselves at times adopted approaches which we have both learnt from and critique in this paper – so some of us have first hand experience of the need for on-going improvement in the strategies that we deploy. ¶ The changes
we advocate will be challenging to enact – and will require vision and leadership on the part of the organisations adopting them. But without such vision and leadership, we do not believe that public communication campaigns on climate change will
create the necessary behavioural changes – indeed, there is a profound risk that many of today’s campaigns will actually prove counter-productive. ¶ Seven Principles¶ 1. Move Beyond Social Marketing ¶ We believe that too little attention is paid to the
understanding that psychologists bring to strategies for motivating change, whilst undue faith is often placed in the application of marketing strategies to ‘sell’ behavioural changes. Unfortunately, in the context of ambitious pro-environmental behaviour,
such strategies seem unlikely to motivate systemic behavioural change. ¶ Social marketing is an effective way of achieving a particular behavioural goal – dozens of practical examples in the field of health behaviour attest to this. Social marketing is really
more of a framework for designing behaviour change programmes than a behaviour change programme - it offers a method of maximising the success of a specific behavioural goal. Darnton (2008) has described social marketing as ‘explicitly
transtheoretical’, while Hastings (2007), in a recent overview of social marketing, claimed that there is no theory of social marketing. Rather, it is a ‘what works’ philosophy, based on previous experience of similar campaigns and programmes. Social
marketing is flexible enough to be applied to a range of different social domains, and this is undoubtedly a fundamental part of its appeal. ¶ However, social marketing’s 'what works' status also means that it is agnostic about the longer term, theoretical
merits of different behaviour change strategies, or the cultural values that specific campaigns serve to strengthen. Social marketing dictates that the most effective strategy should be chosen, where effective means ‘most likely to achieve an immediate
behavioural goal’. ¶ This means that elements of a behaviour change strategy designed according to the principles of social marketing may conflict with other, broader goals. What if the most effective way of promoting pro-environmental behaviour ‘A’
was to pursue a strategy that was detrimental to the achievement of long term pro-environmental strategy ‘Z’? The principles of social marketing have no capacity to resolve this conflict – they are limited to maximising the success of the immediate
behavioural programme. This is not a flaw of social marketing – it was designed to provide tools to address specific behavioural problems on a piecemeal basis. But it is an important limitation, and one that has significant implications if social marketing
techniques are used to promote systemic behavioural change and public engagement on an issue like climate change.
¶ 2. Be honest and forthright about the probable impacts of climate change, and the scale of the challenge we confront in avoiding
these. But avoid deliberate attempts to provoke fear or guilt. ¶ There is no merit in ‘dumbing down’ the scientific evidence that the impacts of climate change are likely to be severe, and that some of these impacts are now almost certainly unavoidable.
Accepting the impacts of climate change will be an important stage in motivating behavioural responses aimed at mitigating the problem. However, deliberate attempts to instil fear or guilt carry considerable risk. ¶ Studies on fear appeals confirm the
potential for fear to change attitudes or verbal expressions of concern, but often not actions or behaviour (Ruiter et al., 2001). The impact of fear appeals is context - and audience - specific; for example, for those who do not yet realise the potentially
‘scary’ aspects of climate change, people need to first experience themselves as vulnerable to the risks in some way in order to feel moved or affected (Das et al, 2003; Hoog et al, 2005). As people move towards contemplating action, fear appeals can help
form a behavioural intent, providing an impetus or spark to ‘move’ from; however such appeals must be coupled with constructive information and support to reduce the sense of danger (Moser, 2007). The danger is that fear can also be disempowering –
producing feelings of helplessness, remoteness and lack of control (O’Neill and Nicholson-Cole, 2009). Fear is likely to trigger ‘barriers to engagement’, such as denial2 (Stoll-Kleemann et al., 2001; Weber, 2006; Moser and Dilling, 2007; Lorenzoni,
Nicholson-Cole & Whitmarsh, 2007). The location of fear in a message is also relevant; it works better when placed first for those who are inclined to follow the advice, but better second for those who aren't (Bier, 2001). ¶ Similarly, studies have shown
that guilt can play a role in motivating people to take action but can also function to stimulate defensive mechanisms against the perceived threat or challenge to one’s sense of identity (as a good, moral person). In the latter case, behaviours may be left
untouched (whether driving a SUV or taking a flight) as one defends against any feelings of guilt or complicity through deployment of a range of justifications for the behaviour (Ferguson & Branscombe, 2010). ¶ Overall, there is a need for emotionally
balanced representations of the issues at hand. This will involve acknowledging the ‘affective reality’ of the situation, e.g. “We know this is scary and overwhelming, but many of us feel this way and we are doing something about it”. ¶ 3. Be honest and
forthright about the impacts of mitigating and adapting to climate change for current lifestyles, and the ‘loss’ - as well as the benefits - that these will entail. Narratives that focus exclusively on the ‘up-side’ of climate solutions are likely to be unconvincing.
While narratives about the future impacts of climate change may highlight the loss of much that we currently hold to be dear, narratives about climate solutions frequently ignore the question of loss. If the two are not addressed concurrently, fear of loss
may be ‘split off’ and projected into the future, where it is all too easily denied. This can be dangerous, because accepting loss is an important step towards working through the associated emotions, and emerging with the energy and creativity to respond
positively to the new situation (Randall, 2009). However, there are plenty of benefits (besides the financial ones) of a low-carbon lifestyle e.g., health, community/social interaction - including the ‘intrinsic' goals mentioned below. It is important to be
honest about both the losses and the benefits that may be associated with lifestyle change, and not to seek to separate out one from the other.¶ 3a. Avoid emphasis upon painless, easy steps. ¶ Be honest about the limitations of voluntary private-sphere
behavioural change, and the need for ambitious new policy interventions that incentivise such changes, or that regulate for them. People know that the scope they have, as individuals, to help meet the challenge of climate change is extremely limited. For
many people, it is perfectly sensible to continue to adopt high-carbon lifestyle choices whilst simultaneously being supportive of government interventions that would make these choices more difficult for everyone. ¶ The adoption of small-scale private
sphere behavioural changes is sometimes assumed to lead people to adopt ever more difficult (and potentially significant) behavioural changes. The empirical evidence for this ‘foot-in-thedoor’ effect is highly equivocal. Some studies detect such an effect;
others studies have found the reverse effect (whereby people tend to ‘rest on their laurels’ having adopted a few simple behavioural changes - Thogersen and Crompton, 2009). Where attention is drawn to simple and painless privatesphere behavioural
changes, these should be urged in pursuit of a set of intrinsic goals (that is, as a response to people’s understanding about the contribution that such behavioural change may make to benefiting their friends and family, their community, the wider world,
or in contributing to their growth and development as individuals) rather than as a means to achieve social status or greater financial success. Adopting behaviour in pursuit of intrinsic goals is more likely to lead to ‘spillover’ into other sustainable
behaviours (De Young, 2000; Thogersen and Crompton, 2009). ¶ People aren’t stupid: they know that if there are wholesale changes in the global climate underway, these will not be reversed merely through checking their tyre pressures or switching
their TV off standby. An emphasis upon simple and painless steps suppresses debate about those necessary responses that are less palatable – that will cost people money, or that will infringe on cherished freedoms (such as to fly). Recognising this will
be a key step in accepting the reality of loss of aspects of our current lifestyles, and in beginning to work through the powerful emotions that this will engender (Randall, 2009). ¶ 3b. Avoid over-emphasis on the economic opportunities that mitigating,
and adapting to, climate change may provide. ¶ There will, undoubtedly, be economic benefits to be accrued through investment in new technologies, but there will also be instances where the economic imperative and the climate change adaptation or
mitigation imperative diverge, and periods of economic uncertainty for many people as some sectors contract. It seems inevitable that some interventions will have negative economic impacts (Stern, 2007). ¶ Undue emphasis upon economic imperatives
serves to reinforce the dominance, in society, of a set of extrinsic goals (focussed, for example, on financial benefit). A large body of empirical research demonstrates that these extrinsic goals are antagonistic to the emergence of pro-social and
proenvironmental concern (Crompton and Kasser, 2009).¶ 3c. Avoid emphasis upon the opportunities of ‘green consumerism’ as a response to climate change. ¶ As mentioned above (3b), a large body of research points to the antagonism between goals
directed towards the acquisition of material objects and the emergence of pro-environmental and pro-social concern (Crompton and Kasser, 2009). Campaigns to ‘buy green’ may be effective in driving up sales of particular products, but in conveying the
impression that climate change can be addressed by ‘buying the right things’, they risk undermining more difficult and systemic changes. A recent study found that people in an experiment who purchased ‘green’ products acted less altruistically on
subsequent tasks (Mazar & Zhong, 2010) – suggesting that small ethical acts may act as a ‘moral offset’ and licence undesirable behaviours in other domains. This does not mean that private-sphere behaviour changes will always lead to a reduction in
subsequent pro-environmental behaviour, but it does suggest that the reasons used to motivate these changes are critically important. Better is to emphasise that ‘every little helps a little’ – but that these changes are only the beginning of a process that
must also incorporate more ambitious private-sphere change and significant collective action at a political level. ¶ 4. Empathise with the emotional responses that will be engendered by a forthright presentation of the probable impacts of cli mate change.
¶ Belief in climate change and support for low-carbon policies will remain fragile unless people are emotionally engaged. We should expect people to be sad or angry, to feel guilt or shame, to yearn for that which is lost or to search for more comforting
answers (Randall, 2009). Providing support and empathy in working through the painful emotions of 'grief' for a society that mu st undergo changes is a prerequisite for subsequent adaptation to new circumstances. ¶ Without such support and empathy,
it is more likely that people will begin to deploy a range of maladaptive ‘coping strategies’, such as denial of personal responsibility, blaming others, or becoming apathetic (Lertzman, 2008). An audience should not be admonished for deploying such
strategies – this would in itself be threatening, and could therefore harden resistance to positive behaviour change (Miller and Rolnick, 2002). The key is not to dismiss people who exhibit maladaptive coping strategies, but to understand how they can be
made more adaptive. People who feel socially supported will be more likely to adopt adaptive emotional responses - so facilitating social support for proenvironmental behaviour is crucial. ¶ 5. Promote pro-environmental social norms and harness the
power of social networks ¶ One way of bridging the gap between private-sphere behaviour changes and collective action is the promotion of pro-environmental social norms. Pictures and videos of ordinary people (‘like me’) engaging in significant
proenvironmental actions are a simple and effective way of generating a sense of social normality around pro-environmental behaviour (Schultz, Nolan, Cialdini, Goldstein and Griskevicius, 2007). There are different reasons that people adopt social
norms, and encouraging people to adopt a positive norm simply to ‘conform’, to avoid a feeling of guilt, or for fear of not ‘fitting in’ is likely to produce a relatively shallow level of motivation for behaviour change. Where social norms can be combined with
‘intrinsic’ motivations (e.g. a sense of social belonging), they are likely to be more effective and persistent. ¶ Too often, environmental communications are directed to the individual as a single unit in the larger social system of consumption and political
engagement. This can make the problems feel too overwhelming, and evoke unmanageable levels of anxiety. Through the enhanced awareness of what other people are doing, a strong sense of collective purpose can be engendered. One factor that is
likely to influence whether adaptive or maladaptive coping strategies are selected in response to fear about climate change is whether people feel supported by a social network – that is, whether a sense of ‘sustainable citizenship’ is fostered. The efficacy
of groupbased programmes at promoting pro-environmental behaviour change has been demonstrated on numerous occasions – and participants in these projects consistently point to a sense of mutual learning and support as a key reason for making
and maintaining changes in behaviour (Nye and Burgess, 2008). There are few influences more powerful than an individual’s social network. Networks are instrumental not just in terms of providing social support, but also by creating specific content of
social identity – defining what it means to be “us”. If environmental norms are incorporated at this level (become defining for the group) they can result in significant behavioural change (also reinforced through peer pressure). ¶ Of course, for the
majority of people, this is unlikely to be a network that has climate change at its core. But social networks – Trade Unions, Rugby Clubs, Mother & Toddler groups – still perform a critical role in spreading change through society. Encouraging and
supporting pre-existing social networks to take ownership of climate change (rather than approach it as a problem for ‘green groups’) is a critical task. As well as representing a crucial bridge between individuals and broader society, peer-to-peer
learning circumnavigates many of the problems associated with more ‘top down’ models of communication – not least that government representatives are perceived as untrustworthy (Poortinga & Pidgeon, 2003). Peer-to-peer learning is more easily
achieved in group-based dialogue than in designing public information films: But public information films can nonetheless help to establish social norms around community-based responses to the challenges of climate change, through clear visual
portrayals of people engaging collectively in the pro-environmental behaviour.¶ The discourse should be shifted increasingly from ‘you’ to ‘we’ and from ‘I’ to ‘us’. This is starting to take place in emerging forms of community-based activism, such as the
Transition Movement and Cambridge Carbon Footprint’s ‘Carbon Conversations’ model – both of which recognize the power of groups to help support and maintain lifestyle and identity changes. A nationwide climate change engagement project us ing a
group-based behaviour change model with members of Trade Union networks is currently underway, led by the Climate Outreach and Information Network. These projects represent a method of climate change communication and engagement radically
different to that typically pursued by the government – and may offer a set of approaches that can go beyond the limited reach of social marketing techniques.¶ One potential risk with appeals based on social norms is that they often contain a hidden
message. So, for example, a campaign that focuses on the fact that too many people take internal flights actually contains two messages – that taking internal flights is bad for the environment, and that lots of people are taking internal flights. This second
message can give those who do not currently engage in that behaviour a perverse incentive to do so, and campaigns to promote behaviour change should be very careful to avoid this. The key is to ensure that information about what is happening (termed
descriptive norms), does not overshadow information about what should be happening (termed injunctive norms). ¶ 6. Think about the language you use, but don’t rely on language alone ¶ A number of recent publications have highlighted the results of
focus group research and talk-back tests in order to ‘get the language right’ (Topos Partnership, 2009; Western Strategies & Lake Research Partners, 2009), culminating in a series of suggestions for framing climate-change communications. For example,
these two studies led to the suggestions that communicators should use the term ‘global warming’ or ‘our deteriorating atmosphere’, respectively, rather than ‘climate change’. Other research has identified systematic differences in the way that people
interpret the terms ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’, with ‘global warming’ perceived as more emotionally engaging than ‘climate change’ (Whitmarsh, 2009). ¶ Whilst ‘getting the language right’ is important, it can only play a small part in a
communication strategy. More important than the language deployed (i.e. ‘conceptual frames') are what have been referred to by some cognitive linguists as 'deep frames'. Conceptual framing refers to catchy slogans and clever spin (which may or may
not be honest). At a deeper level, framing refers to forging the connections between a debate or public policy and a set of deeper values or principles. Conceptual framing (crafting particular messages focussing on particular issues) cannot work unless
these messages resonate with a set of long-term deep frames.¶ Policy proposals which may at the surface level seem similar (perhaps they both set out to achieve a reduction in environmental pollution) may differ importantly in terms of their deep
framing. For example, putting a financial value on an endangered species, and building an economic case for their conservation ‘commodifies’ them, and makes them equivalent (at the level of deep frames) to other assets of the same value (a hotel chain,
perhaps). This is a very different frame to one that attempts to achieve the same conservation goals through the ascription of intrinsic value to such species – as something that should be protected in its own right. Embedding particular deep frames
requires concerted effort (Lakoff, 2009), but is the beginning of a process that can build a broad, coherent cross-departmental response to climate change from government. ¶ 7. Encourage public demonstrations of frustration at the limited pace of
Private-sphere behavioural change is not enough, and may
become a
diversion from the more important process of bringing political pressure to bear on
government action¶
even at times
policy-makers. The importance of public demonstrations of frustration at the lack of
political progress on climate
is widely recognised including by
government itself Climate change communications
should work to
normalise public displays of frustration with the slow pace of political change.
communications can play a role in fostering demand for - as well as acceptance of
- policy change
both
change and the barriers presented by vested interests
.
–
, including government communication campaigns,
Ockwell et al (2009)
argued that
. Climate change communication could (and should) be used to encourage people to demonstrate (for example through public demonstrations) about how they would like structural barriers to
behavioural/societal change to be removed.
A2 Epistemology
Epistemological debate is irrelevant - concrete action is inevitable - they
fail to create useful knowledge
Friedrichs, Oxford politics lecturer, 2009
(Jorg, “From positivist pretense to pragmatic practice: Varieties of pragmatic methodology
in IR scholarship. International Studies Review 11(3): 645–648)
As Friedrich Nietzsche ([1887] 1994:1; cf. Wilson 2002) knew, the knower isstrangely unknown to himself. In fact, it
is much more
hazardous to contemplate the way how we gain knowledge than to gain such knowledge in
the first place. This is not to deny that intellectuals are a narcissistic Kratochwil lot, with a penchant for omphaloskepsis. The
typical result of their navel-gazing, however, is not increased self-awareness. Scholars are more
likely to come up with ex-post-facto rationalizations of how they would like to see their activity than with
accurate descriptions of how they go about business. As a result, in science there is a paradoxical divide between
positivist pretenseand pragmatic practice. Many prominent scholars proceed pragmatically in gen-erating their knowledge, only to vest it all in a
positivist cloak when it comes topresenting results. In the wake of Karl Popper (1963), fantasies about ingeniousconjectures and inexorable
refutations continue to hold sway despite the muchmore prosaic way most scholars grope around in the formulation of their theo-ries, and the
much less rigorous way they assess the value of their hypotheses. In proposing pragmatism as a more realistic alternative to positivist idealizations, I am not concerned with the original intentions of Charles Peirce. Theseare discussed and enhanced by Ryto¨ vuori-Apunen (this forum).
Instead, Ipresent various attempts to make pragmatism work as a methodology for IR scholarship. This includes my own preferred methodology,
the pragmaticresearch strategy of abduction. As Fritz Kratochwil and I argue elsewhere, abduction
should be at the center of
our efforts, while deduction and induction areimportant but auxiliary tools (Friedrichs and 2009).Of course, one does not need
to be a pragmatist to proceed in a pragmatic way. Precisely because it is derived from
practice, pragmatic commonsense is a sold as the hills. For example, James Rosenau (1988:164) declared many
yearsago that he coveted ‘‘a long-held conviction that one advances knowledge most effectively by continuously moving back and forth between
very abstract and very empirical levels of inquiry, allowing the insights of the former to exert pressurefor the latter even as the findings of the
latter, in turn, exert pressure for the for-mer, thus sustaining an endless cycle in which theory and research feed on eachother.’’ This was shortly
before Rosenau’s turn to postmodernism, while he wasstill touting the virtues of behaviorism and standard scientific requisites, such
asindependent and dependent variables and theory testing. But if we take his state-ment at face value, it appears that Rosenau-the-positivist was
guided by a sort of pragmatism for all but the name. While such practical commonsense is certainly valuable, in and by itself, it does not qualify
as scientific methodology. Science requires a higher degree of methodological awareness. For this reason, I am not interested here in
pragma-tism as unspoken commonsense, or as a pretext for doing empirical researchunencumbered by theoretical and methodological
considerations. Nor am I con-cerned with
pragmatism as an excuse for staging yet another
epistemological debate. Instead, I am interested in pragmatism as an instrument to go about research with an appropriate degree of epistemological and
methodologicalawareness. Taking this criterion as my yardstick, the following three varieties of pragmatist methodology in recent IR scholarship are worth mentioning: theory synthesis, analytic
eclecticism (AE), and abduction.Theory synthesis is proposed by Andrew Moravcsik (2003), who claims that theories can be combined as long as they are compatible at some unspecifiedfundamental
level, and that data will help to identify the right combination of theories. He does not explicitly invoke pragmatism but vests his pleading in apositivist cloak by using the language of theory testing. When
looking closer,however, it becomes apparent that his theoretical and methodological noncha-lance is far more pragmatic than what his positivist rhetoric suggests. Moravcsiksees himself in good
company, dropping the following names: Robert Keohane,Stephen Walt, Jack Snyder, Stephen Van Evera, Bary Buzan, Bruce Russett, John O’Neal, Martha Finnemore, and Kathryn Sikkink. With the partial
excep-tion of Finnemore, however, none of these scholars explicitly links his or herscholarship to pragmatism. They employ pragmatic commonsense in theirresearch, but devoutly ignore pragmatism as
a philosophical and methodologicalposition. As a result, it is fair to say that theory synthesis is only on a slightly higher level of intellectual awareness than Rosenau’s statement quoted above. Analytic
eclecticism, as advertized by Peter Katzenstein and Rudra Sil, links acommonsensical approach to empirical research with a more explicit commit-ment to pragmatism (Sil and Katzenstein 2005;
Katzenstein and Sil 2008).The 7 Even the dean of critical rationalism, Karl Popper, is ‘‘guilty’’ of lapses into pragmatism, for example when hestates that scientists, like hungry animals, classify objects
according to needs and interests, although with the impor-tant difference that they are guided in their quest for finding regularities not so much by the stomach but ratherby empirical problems and
epistemic interests (Popper 1963:61–62). 646 Pragmatism and International Relations idea is to combine existing research traditions in a pragmatic fashion and thusto enable the formulation and
exploration of novel and more complex sets of problems. The constituent elements of different research traditions are trans-lated into mutually compatible vocabularies and then recombined in novel
ways.This implies that most scholars must continue the laborious process of formulat-ing parochial research traditions so that a few cosmopolitan colleagues will beenabled to draw upon their work and
construct syncretistic collages. 8 In additionto themselves, Katzenstein and Sil cite a number of like-minded scholars such asCharles Tilly, Sidney Tarrow, Paul Pierson, and Robert Jervis. 9 The ascription
isprobably correct given the highly analytical and eclectic approach of these schol-ars. Nevertheless, apart from Katzenstein and Sil themselves none of these schol-ars has explicitly avowed himself to
AE.My preferred research strategy is abduction, which is epistemologically asself-aware as AE but minimizes the dependence on existing research traditions.The typical situation for abduction is when
we, both in everyday life and as socialscientists, become aware of a certain class of phenomena that interests us for somereason, but for which we lack applicable theories. We simply trust, although we
donot know for certain, that the observed class of phenomena is not random. Wetherefore start collecting pertinent observations and, at the same time, applyingconcepts from existing fields of our
knowledge. Instead of trying to impose anabstract theoretical template (deduction) or ‘‘simply’’ inferring propositions fromfacts (induction), we start reasoning at an intermediate level (abduction).
Abduction follows the predicament that science is, or should be, above all amore conscious and systematic version of the way by which humans have learnedto solve problems and generate knowledge in
In our
own practice, most of us manage to deal with many challenging situations. The way we
accomplish this is completely different from, and far moreefficient than, the way knowledge is generated
their everyday lives. As it iscurrently practiced, science is often a poor emulator of what we are able toachieve in practice. This is unfortunate because human practice is the ultimatemiracle.
according to standard scientific methods. If it is true that in our own practice we proceed not so much by induction or deduction but rather by
abduction, then science would do well tomimic this at least in some respects. 10 Abduction has been invoked by numerous scholars, including
Alexander Wendt, John Ruggie, Jeffrey Checkel, Martin Shapiro, Alec Stone Sweet, andMartha Finnemore. While they all use the term abduction,
none has ever thor-oughly specified its meaning. To make up for this omission, I have developedabduction into an explicit methodology and
applied it in my own research oninternational police cooperation (Friedrichs 2008). Unfortunately, it is impossi-ble to go into further detail here.
Readers interested in abduction as a way toadvance international research and methodology can also be referred to my recent article with Fritz
Kratochwil (Friedrichs and Kratochwil 2009).On a final note, we should be careful not to erect pragmatism as the ultimateepistemological
fantasy to caress the vanity of Nietzschean knowers unknown tothemselves, namely that they are ingeniously ‘‘sorting out’’ problematic situations. Scientific inquiry is not simply an intimate encounter between a researchproblem and a problem solver. It is a social activity taking place
in communitiesof practice (Wenger 1998). Pragmatism must be neither reduced to the utility of results regardless of their social presuppositions
and meaning, nor to the 8 Pace Rudra Sil (this forum), the whole point about eclecticism is that you rely on existing traditions to blendthem into
something new. There is no eclecticism without something to be eclectic about. 9 One may further expand the list by including the international
society approach of the English school (Ma-kinda 2000), as well as the early Kenneth Waltz (1959). 10 Precisely for this reason, abduction
understood as ‘Inference to the Best Explanation’ plays a crucial role inthe field of Artificial Intelligence. 647 The Forum fabrication of consensus
among scientists. Pragmatism
as the practice of dis-cursive communities and pragmatism as
a device for the generation of useful knowledge are two sides of the same coin
Epistemological concerns divert attention away from concrete political
solutions- it’s a direct threat to solving war
Houghton 8 [David Patrick, professor of political science @ the University of Central
Florida, International Politics, March, Volume 45, Issue 2, pg. 115]
Writing in
1989, Thomas Biersteker noted that 'the vast majority of scholarship in
international relations (and the social sciences for that matter) proceeds without conscious
reflection on its philosophical bases or premises. In professional meetings, lectures, seminars and the
design of curricula, we do not often engage in serious reflection on the philosophical bases or implications of our activity.
Too often, consideration of these core issues is reserved for (and largely forgotten after) the introductory weeks of
required concepts and methods courses, as we socialize students into the profession' (Biersteker, 1989). This
observation -- while accurate at the time -- would surely be deemed incorrect were it to be
made today. Even some scholars who profess regret at the philosophically self-regarding nature of contemporary of
IR theory, nevertheless feel compelled to devote huge chunks of their work to epistemological issues before getting to
more substantive matters (see for instance Wendt, 1999). The
recent emphasis on epistemology has
helped to push IR as a discipline further and further away from the concerns of
those who actually practice IR. The consequent decline in the policy relevance of
what we do, and our retreat into philosophical self-doubt, is ironic given the roots of the field in
very practical political concerns (most notably, how to avoid war). What I am
suggesting is not that IR scholars should ignore philosophical questions, or that such
'navel gazing' is always unproductive, for questions of epistemology surely undergird every vision of IR that ever existed.
Rather, I would suggest that the existing debate is sterile and unproductive in the
sense that the various schools of thought have much more in common than they
suppose; stated more specifically, postpositivists have much more in common than they would like to think with the
positivists they seek to condemn. Consequently, to the extent that there is a meaningful dialogue
going on with regard to epistemological questions, it has no real impact on what
we do as scholars when we look at the world 'out there'. Rather than focusing on
epistemology, it is inevitably going to be more fruitful to subject the substantive
claims made by positivists (of all metatheoretical stripes) and postpositivists to the cold light of day. My own view,
as the reader may have gathered already, is that the empirical claims of scholars like Der Derian and Campbell will not
often stand up to such harsh scrutiny given the inattention to careful evidence gathering betrayed by both, but this is a
side issue here; the point is that substantive theoretical and empirical claims, rather than metatheoretical or
epistemological ones, ought to be what divides the international relations scene today.
A2: community
It’s impossible to completely overcome alterity -- we inevitably ignore
other populations -- perpetuates discrimination
Hägglund 4 [The Necessity of Discrimination Disjoining Derrida and Levinas, Martin
Hägglund, wedish philosopher, literary theorist, and scholar of modernist literature,
currently appointed as an Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Humanities at
Yale University, 2004, ProjectMUSE]
Derrida's argument here is pivotal for understanding the notion of the "infinitely other" that is operative in his
writings. Derrida's employment of the term "infinitely other" does not signal an adherence to Levinas's
conception of the Other as a positive infinity. Rather, it designates the negative infinity of finitude. Finitude
entails that the other is infinitely other, not because the other is absolved from relations and reposes in itself but
because finitude entails that alterity cannot ever be eliminated or overcome. The same logic
informs Derrida's use of terms like "absolutely other" or "wholly other" (tout autre), which must be rigorously
distinguished from Levinas's use of these terms. For Derrida, the "absolutely" or "wholly" does not refer to a
positive infinity or to any other form of divinity, but to the radical finitude of every other. Every finite other
is absolutely other, not because it is absolutely in itself but on the contrary because it can
never be in itself. Thus, it is always becoming other than itself and cannot have any integrity as such (for
example, as "ethical"). For the same reason, Derrida's notion of "infinite responsibility" should not be conflated
with Levinas's. For Derrida, the infinitude of responsibility answers to the fact that responsibility always takes
place in relation to a negative infinity of others. The negative infinity of responsibility is both spatial
(innumerable finite others that exceed my horizon) and temporal (innumerable times past and to come that
exceed my horizon). Far from confirming Levinas's sense of responsibility, the negative infinity of others is fatal
for his notion of an originary encounter that would give ethics the status of "first philosophy" and be the guiding
principle for a metaphysical "goodness." Even if it were possible to sacrifice yourself completely to
another, to devote all your forces to the one who is encountered face-to-face, it would mean
that you had disregarded or denied all the others who demanded your attention or needed
your help. For there are always more than two, as Richard Beardsworth has aptly put it [137]. Whenever I
turn toward another I turn away from yet another, and thus exercise discrimination. As
Derrida points out in The Gift of Death, "I cannot respond to the call, the demand, the
obligation, or even the love of another without sacrificing the other other, the other
others" [68]. Consequently, Derrida emphasizes that the concept of responsibility lends itself a priori to
"scandal and aporia" [68]. There are potentially an endless number of others to consider, and one cannot take
any responsibility without excluding some others in favor of certain others. What makes it possible to be
responsible is thus at the same time what makes it impossible for any responsibility to be fully responsible.
Responsibility, then, is always more or less discriminating, and infinite responsibility is but another name for the
necessity of discrimination.
Isolating alterity as a singular impact reduces our ontological
relationship to the other -- turns the aff
Guenther 11 [The Ethics and Politics of Otherness: Negotiating Alterity and Racial
Difference, Lisa Guenther, Vanderbuilt University, PHD in philosophy, 2011, ProjectMUSE]
While some readers identify the Levinasian other with the indigent poor, the homeless, or the third world
other9 —and while Levinas's own language sometimes encourages this interpretation10 —I argue that the
political relevance of Levinas's ethics is weakened rather than strengthened by such an
approach. To the extent that the alterity of the other is identified with particular social,
economic, or political differences, it loses the ethical power to break with every context and
to cut across relative differences. Precisely because the other could be anyone—black or white, rich or
poor, American or Afghani—the command to respond to the other's singularity is absolute. It matters little to
Levinas if the other is similar or different to me; the fact that someone has brown skin or blue eyes, both of
which are attributes she shares with other people, does not affect the sense in which she also provokes me to
respond to her in a way that sustains her alterity without reducing her to the token of a type or a variation on a
theme. To identify alterity with specific differences would be to reduce an ethical relation
to an ontological attribute, as if some others possessed more alterity than others. But if
alterity means ethical singularity, and if ethical singularity is not an attribute of individuals or groups but rather
a way of commanding an ethical response, then alterity does not "belong" to anyone or anything.
Rather, it emerges relationally in the very command that forbids assimilation, categorization, or comparison.
The other emerges as such by forbidding her reduction to sameness, and not because she already possesses the
quality of irreducible uniqueness. To understand how this is the case, we must take a closer look at the ethical
encounter as Levinas describes it.
A2: Conservatism
Their “topicality bad” arguments assume that boundaries constrain
innovation. We critique this assumption. “Topicality not framework” is
the best way to encourage creative imagination within the confines of a
bounded environment. Prefer evidence from education and innovation
experts.
Thomas and Brown 11 — Douglas Thomas, Associate Professor in the Annenberg
School for Communication at the University of Southern California, founding member of the
Critical and Cultural Studies division of the National Communication Association, holds a Ph.
D. in Communication from the University of Minnesota, and John Seely Brown, Visiting
Scholar and Adviser to the Provost at the University of Southern California, independent
cochairman of the Deloitte Center for the Edge, former Chief Scientist and Director of the
Palo Alto Research Center at Xerox, holds a Ph.D. in Computer and Communication Sciences
from the University of Michigan, 2011 (“We Know More Than We Can Say,” A New Culture of
Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change, Published by
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, ISBN 1456458884, p. 79)
Inquiry Conventional wisdom holds that different people learn in different ways. Something is missing from that idea,
however, so we offer a corollary: Different people,
when presented with exactly the same
information in exactly the same way, will learn different things. Most models of education
and learning have almost no tolerance for this kind of thing. As a result, teaching tends to
focus on eliminating the source of the problem: the student’s imagination. Imagine a
situation where two students are learning to play the piano. The lesson for the day is a Bach
prelude. The first student attacks the piano forcefully, banging out each note correctly but
with a violent intensity that is uncharacteristic for the style of the piece. The second student
seems to view the written score as a loose framework; he varies the rhythm, modifies the
melody, and follows his own internal muse. In today’s classroom, the teacher will see two
students “doing it wrong.” In the new culture of learning, the teacher will see a budding
rock star and a jazz musician. The story of these students illustrates a fundamental
principle of the new culture of learning: Students learn best when they are able to follow
their passion and operate within the constraints of a bounded environment. Both of
those elements matter. Without the boundary set by the assignment of playing the prelude,
there would be no medium for growth. But without the passion, there would be nothing to
grow in the medium. Yet the process of discovering one’s passion can be complicated.
Prefer our evidence — psychological studies confirm our thesis.
Gibbert et al. 7 — Michael Gibbert, Assistant Professor of Management at Bocconi University (Italy), et al., with
Martin Hoeglis, Professor of Leadership and Human Resource Management at WHU—Otto Beisheim School of Management
(Germany), and Lifsa Valikangas, Professor of Innovation Management at the Helsinki School of Economics (Finland) and
Director of the Woodside Institute, 2007 (“In Praise of Resource Constraints,” MIT Sloan Management Review, Spring, Available
Online at https://umdrive.memphis.edu/gdeitz/public/The%20Moneyball%20Hypothesis/Gibbert%20et%20al.%20%20SMR%20(2007)%20Praise%20Resource%20Constraints.pdf, Accessed 04-08-2012, p. 15-16) Resource
constraints can also fuel innovative team performance directly. In the spirit of the proverb
"necessity is the mother of invention," [end page 15] teams may produce better results
because of resource constraints. Cognitive psychology provides experimental support for
the "less is more" hypothesis. For example, scholars in creative cognition find in laboratory
tests that subjects are most innovative when given fewer rather than more resources
for solving a problem. The reason seems to be that the human mind is most productive when
restricted. Limited—or better focused—by specific rules and constraints, we are more
likely to recognize an unexpected idea. Suppose, for example, that we need to put dinner on the table for
unexpected guests arriving later that day. The main constraints here are the ingredients available and how much time is left.
One way to solve this problem is to think of a familiar recipe and then head off to the supermarket for the extra ingredients.
Alternatively, we may start by looking in the refrigerator and cupboard to see what is already there, then allowing ourselves to
devise innovative ways of combining subsets of these ingredients. Many cooks attest that the latter option, while riskier, often
leads to more creative and better appreciated dinners. In fact, it is the option invariably preferred by professional chefs. The
heightened innovativeness of such "constraints-driven" solutions comes from team
members' tendencies, under the circumstances, to look for alternatives beyond "how
things are normally done," write C. Page Moreau and Darren W. Dahl in a 2005 Journal of Consumer Research
article. Would-be innovators facing constraints are more likely to find creative analogies
and combinations that would otherwise be hidden under a glut of resources.
A2 Education
Our interpretation turns this because they could have read a topical affirmative and still
have critical advantages. Also topic education o/w because it applies to everyone, is just as
important and is way more predictable.
A2 Fairness and predictability
They can be topical without being heteronormative. The ocean and the topic don’t have a
specific gender orientation. They are creating their own borders. Topical version of the aff
solves this. Galoway evidence says that there is no negative role without predictability
A2 policymaking
The affirmative could have done a policy that solves the reasons for everyday violence
within the borders of the topic.
A2 Preemption
Doesn’t apply—topical affirmatives can solve existing real-world issues. They can solve for
things like human rights violations through a topical USFG action
A2 State
They don’t have to endorse the state to use it. Mendoza evidence says that you must engage
in the institutions that oppress you.
A2 Colonialism
This is a great example of why state action is key. Through state action you could move
away from neo-colonialist policy and change the American policy. Also, their framework
can’t solve this because they do not change how we our the judge think about the debate.