Boundary Objects and Persuasion
Across Discourse Communities
Greg Wilson
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Greg Wilson is a
Technical Staff Member on the Systems Ethnography and
Qualitative Modeling (SEQM) team within the Statistical Sciences
Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory. His research focuses on
the ethnography and representation of expert judgment and
technical knowledge, interdisciplinary problem solving, and
science studies. His project work at LANL has included work with
the Department of Energy, Department of Defense, Department of
Homeland Security, and Laboratory partners in private industry.
Dr. Wilson holds a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Professional
Communication from New Mexico State University, an M.A. in
Technical Communication from Carnegie Mellon University, and a
B.A. in Psychology from Emory University. He leverages his
training in Rhetorical studies and critical theory to study and
model how technical communities structure their knowledge about
complex systems.
Paper Description:
This paper will examine how the concept of boundary objects that
unite communities can inform our understanding of persuasion
across discourse communities. I will focus on the efforts of two
individuals associated with the community in and around Los
Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). One individual, John Bartlit,
has for the last few decades worked tirelessly as an engineer at
LANL (an entity that engenders environmental concerns for many
in Northern New Mexico) and as a spokesperson for New Mexico
Citizens for Clean Air and Water (a state environmental advocacy
group). His efforts at environmental advocacy have involved more
than code-switching (i.e., talking like an engineer to
industrial interests and like an environmentalist to green
interests). He has made concerted efforts to speak sensibly to
both communities, avoiding the loaded language that would allow
either side to dismiss his discourse. The second individual is
Ed Grothus, a former LANL machinist who since retiring from the
laboratory has become an anti-nuclear and peace advocate. An
idealist of grand proportions, he writes to newspapers and to
elected officials to comment on national security and nuclear
policy, he creates sculptures and public art that attempt to
persuade the community of the folly of nuclear weapons, and he
tirelessly engages the people he encounters around town in
discussions on the same topics.
In this paper
I will examine the boundary objects that unite the New Mexico
environmental community and the Los Alamos community (a
community that is geographically, socially, and economically
intertwined with the Laboratory) and how Bartlitt and Grothus
deploy or play off of those objects to persuade the members of
intersecting discourse communities/social worlds to new beliefs.
--GW
[Thursday, November 6;
7:30-9:30
PM; 204 Jefferson Building]
