"Rai demonstrates the value of fieldwork in rhetoric and, in doing so, strengthens rhetorical scholarship and praxis. This book makes an important contribution because it offers one of few long-term ethnographic studies grrounded in diverse approaches to rhetoric and focuses on topoi, like housing, diversity, and democracy, to transform understandings of such commonplaces."
—Rhetoric and Public Affairs
"Rai unravels how democracy is continuously achieved and dissipated in the confluences of rhetorical performances, community activisms and, as to be reasonably expected, the history, culture, and economy of specific citizen groups as they strive in situ for what they believe democratic rule ought to be. Taking as its starting point the case of Wilson Yard, a conflict-ridden site in an ethnically and economically diverse Chicago neighborhood, the book tracks the multiple lines of forces that jointly put democracy in action in an urban American context. Blending rhetorical analyses, ethnographic description, and keen sociopolitical observations, Democracy’s Lot will be of interest to anyone who not only cherishes democratic values but wishes to know how these values can be realized in the concrete struggles for justice in our lives. Summing Up: Recommended."
—CHOICE
“Democracy’s Lot is one of the most interesting, original, and important studies I have read in a long time. Not only a fascinating story about gentrification and resistance in the contemporary North American city, it’s also a model of original sociological research, using a methodology the author calls ‘rhetorical ethnography,’ which combines the deep, sustained, social immersion of ethnography with the detailed, critical discourse analysis of rhetoric. Above all, Rai makes a timely, ground-breaking intervention into the study of contemporary democracy, putting the lie to both uncritical celebrations of free and open public spheres and radical critiques of democracy in the era of neoliberalism.”
—David Fleming, author of City of Rhetoric: Revitalizing the Public Sphere in Metropolitan America
"Candice Rai presents an innovative methodological framework that employs textual analysis and fieldwork to study the interactions of housing debates, street protests, public art, visceral bodily responses, and new media technologies. Fieldwork presents an exciting opportunity to expand the field of inquiry for rhetorical scholarship that typically lies outside of our reach. However, Rai adds to and extends this line of inquiry by drawing explicit connections between text-centered rhetorical themes and concepts (like topoi) and the field as a place of rhetorical practice.”
—Robert Asen, coeditor of Public Modalities: Rhetoric, Culture, Media, and the Shape of Public Life
