reading notes

Notes on Markel, "Ethics in Tech Comm".

tags: BORING.

The easy questions:

When was it published?

2001, as part of ATTW studies in Technical Communication.

What group of scholars is the author addressing?

Technical communication practitioners, teachers and researchers.

What is the genre and what type of research is the author doing?

Markel calls the book "A critique and synthesis".

What was going on in the field when the author wrote it – how does the book reflect the conversation that has been taking place in the field?

Lots of people had talked about rhetoric, tech comm and ethics. But there were 3 problems:

1) Ethics is conceived so broadly that it loses its connection to the study of values and conduct.
2) Ethics is conceived as a critique of capitalism.
3) Ethics is equated with ethos.

What aspects of knowledge does the author focus on and why does the author focus on these aspects of knowledge?

To move beyond the rigid ideas suggested above, Markel sugests ways of looking at and talking about ethics -- not ethical heuristics.

What is the epistemological background?

Markel discusses the history of ethical theory as a logical, evidence-based enterprise: rights - based theories, utilitarian theories, transitional ideas and contemporary approaches. Ethics is important in rhet. (i.e. rhetoric entails action) and especially in tech. comm, when discourse is geared toward producing action.

What is the argument?

Ethics is not an abstract theory but a practical art.
Ethics is related but logically prior to rhetoric.
Values in action, the most sophisticated ethical perspective, derives from the history of philosophical ethics.
Business ethics can tell us stuff.
Ethical conversations work best in an open conversation involving all stakeholders.

What evidence does the author bring?

Markel's work is more exploratory, inviting the reader to think through case studies and hypothetical though experiments.

What perspective does the author take?

Two-part framework for thinking through ethics:
Determine the most ethical course of action [abstract]
Determine the most available ethical course of action [concrete]

Use discourse ethics to hold the conversation and the utility-rights-justice-care model to evaluate alternatives. [note: the urjc model will be applied differently by different stakeholders and lead to conflicted results].

What perspective is under-represented or missing?

Why not look at ethics as an inventional art -- take a step back and look at how people generate alternative courses of action, rather than just think through the available options?