Marie Baker-Ohler

The Communicative Relationship Between Dialogue and Care Marie Baker-Ohler

This book provides insight into the nature of the relationship between dialogue and care. The work is textured and mindful of the human need for authentic communication between embedded human communicative agents. This is because the authors are well-versed in the field, having published articles, books, and book chapters dealing with the cultivation of human communication and human relationships through aspects of care, dialogue, and other philosophical preconditions. This study approaches the relationship of care and dialogue through a constructive hermeneutic approach situated within the current historical moment, while relying on a rich and textured historical tradition of philosophical writings that invite new discussion on the value of this relationship. In a historical era of rapidly changing technologies, it is often easier to text, twitter, and e-mail in a hypertext mode that fails to acknowledge the dialogic potential in human relationships. This book reminds us that even in these technologically sophisticated times, we gain more in human relationships through care and dialogue than in quick, instant communication. It is unique from other books dealing with the relationship between dialogue and care in human relationships because it integrates literature involving communication ethics and philosophies of communication framed around the metaphor of "care" to provide a more textured insight related to human communication. The discussion is an alternative to a social scientific approach. Readers will gain a thorough and comprehensive understanding of the issue(s) involved from different perspectives. Many other books on these matters are also theoretically laden with deep philosophical concepts, but they are often devoid of connections to everyday experiences which limits application of the ideas. The authors address this by a text that explores those philosophical and theoretically laden concepts related to "care" in an applied manner, so that the practice of these ideas is situated within actual human interaction. This study provides an in-depth exploration specifically dealing with care as a philosophical and ethical paradigm for living in the world. This book is distinctive as it encompasses theorists/scholars from multiple perspectives that include sociological, psychological, philosophical, and from both social science and humanities approaches; all of which come together within a communication framework. The purpose of this book is to provide readers with the opportunity to consider multiple ways of enhancing human communication through discovering how the notion of "care" has the ability to shape and guide communicative exchanges. Care is posited as a philosophy of communication and more specifically as a communicative ethic that can be embraced in interpersonal and organizational communicative contexts. Our goal is to provide a textured understanding of "care" as it relates to human communication and as it is foregrounded in philosophical thought. This text will help develop philosophical understanding of this topic that is inescapably linked to human communication. This book will interest all in communication, sociology, psychology, and anthropology.