Economies Of Writing

17. Democratic Rhetoric in the Era of Neoliberalism - Phyllis Mentzell Ryder -- Afterword: Lessons Learned - Deborah Brandt -- References -- About the Authors -- Index

Write clearly about any subject: “Writers should check out Economical Writing, and editors should recommend it. Your future readers will be thankful.” —Journal of Scholarly Publishing Economics is not a field known for good writing. Charts, yes. Sparkling prose, no. Except, that is, when it comes to Deirdre Nansen McCloskey. Her conversational and witty yet always clear style is a hallmark of her classic works of economic history, enlivening the dismal science and engaging readers well beyond the discipline. And now she’s here to share the secrets of how it’s done, no matter what your field. Economical Writing is itself economical: a collection of thirty-five pithy rules for making your writing clear, concise, and effective. Proceeding from big-picture ideas to concrete strategies for improvement at the level of the paragraph, sentence, or word, McCloskey shows us that good writing, after all, is not just a matter of taste—it’s a product of adept intuition and a rigorous revision process. Debunking stale rules, warning us that “footnotes are nests for pedants,” and offering an arsenal of readily applicable tools and methods, she shows writers of all levels of experience how to rethink the way they approach their work, and gives them the knowledge to turn mediocre prose into magic. At once efficient and digestible, hilarious and provocative, Economical Writing lives up to its promise. With McCloskey as our guide, we discover how any piece of writing—on economics or any other subject—can be a pleasure to read.

In recent years the economic policies of major financial institutions such as the European Union Central Bank, the U.S. Federal Reserve, and the International Monetary Fund have received growing media attention, reflecting increased public awareness of the impact of these institutions on the global economy and, more immediately, on the material conditions of our everyday lives. Writing the Economy: Activity, Genre and Technology in the World of Banking takes readers into one such site, the Bank of Canada, that country's central bank and monetary-policy authority. Drawing on qualitative data gathered over two decades (1984-2004) and employing theories of activity, genre, narrative, and situated learning, the book provides an ethnographic account of the role of technology-mediated discourse in the Bank's knowledge-building, policy-making, and public communication. The first part of the book describes how the Bank's economists employ a set of written and oral discourse genres in combination with computer-run economic models to create specialized knowledge about the Canadian economy that is applied by the organization's senior decision-makers in directing national monetary policy. The book then examines the economists' use of another set of technology-mediated discourse genres to orchestrate the Bank's external communications with government, the media, the business sector, financial markets, labour, and academia. The book also explores the way in which the economists' discourse practices facilitate individual and organizational learning. In a foreword, Charles Bazerman describes the book's contribution to our understanding of organizational discourse and knowledge-making, situating this contribution in the study of economic rhetoric and the social formation of economy.

Economies of Writing advances scholarship on political economies of writing and writing instruction, considering them in terms of course subject, pedagogy, technology, and social practice. Taking the "economic" as a necessary point of departure and contention for the field, the collection insists that writing concerns are inevitably participants in political markets in their consideration of forms of valuation, production, and circulation of knowledge with labor and with capital. Approaching the economic as plural, contingent, and political, chapters explore complex forces shaping the production and valuation of literacies, languages, identities, and institutions and consider their implications for composition scholarship, teaching, administration, and public rhetorics. Chapters engage a range of issues, including knowledge transfer, cyberpublics, graduate writing courses, and internationalized web domains. Economies of Writing challenges dominant ideologies of writing, writing skills, writing assessment, language, writing technology, and public rhetoric by revealing the complex and shifting valuations of writing practices as they circulate within and across different economies. The volume is a significant contribution to rhetoric and composition’s understanding of and ways to address its seemingly perennial unease about its own work. Contributors: Anis Bawarshi, Deborah Brandt, Jenn Fishman, T. R. Johnson, Jay Jordan, Kacie Kiser, Steve Lamos, Donna LeCourt, Rebecca Lorimer Leonard, Samantha Looker, Katie Malcolm, Paul Kei Matsuda, Joan Mullin, Jason Peters, Christian J. Pulver, Kelly Ritter, Phyllis Mentzell Ryder, Tony Scott, Scott Wible, Yuching Jill Yang, James T. Zebroski

Understanding the way economists see the world is a necessary step on the way to good economics writing. This book guides students through the means and methods of economics writing, by taking a step by step approach investigating: the keys needed to succeed as a writer of economics and an overview of the writing process from beginning to end the basic methods economists use to analyze data and communicate their ideas suggestions for finding and focusing one's topic, including standard economic sources and techniques for doing economic research how to write paper ways of citing sources and creating a bibliography. It also contains useful appendices, which provide details of statistical sources and relevant electronic indices. Used as a standard guide for economics students at Harvard University, this book is of immense practical use to economics students the world over.

Cloud native infrastructure is more than servers, network, and storage in the cloud—it is as much about operational hygiene as it is about elasticity and scalability. In this book, you’ll learn practices, patterns, and requirements for creating infrastructure that meets your needs, capable of managing the full life cycle of cloud native applications. Justin Garrison and Kris Nova reveal hard-earned lessons on architecting infrastructure from companies such as Google, Amazon, and Netflix. They draw inspiration from projects adopted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), and provide examples of patterns seen in existing tools such as Kubernetes. With this book, you will: Understand why cloud native infrastructure is necessary to effectively run cloud native applications Use guidelines to decide when—and if—your business should adopt cloud native practices Learn patterns for deploying and managing infrastructure and applications Design tests to prove that your infrastructure works as intended, even in a variety of edge cases Learn how to secure infrastructure with policy as code

How to Write about Economics and Public Policy is designed to guide graduate students through conducting, and writing about, research on a wide range of topics in public policy and economics. This guidance is based upon the actual writing practices of professional researchers in these fields and it will appeal to practitioners and students in disciplinary areas such as international economics, macroeconomics, development economics, public finance, policy studies, policy analysis, and public administration. Supported by real examples from professional and student writers, the book helps students understand what is expected of writers in their field and guides them through choosing a topic for research to writing each section of the paper. This book would be equally effective as a classroom text or a self-study resource. Teaches students how to write about qualitative and quantitative research in public policy and economics in a way that is suitable for academic consumption and that can drive public policy debates Uses the genre-based approach to writing to teach discipline-appropriate ways of framing problems, designing studies, and writing and structuring content Includes authentic examples written by students and international researchers from various sub-disciplines of economics and public policy Contains strategies and suggestions for textual analysis of research samples to give students an opportunity to practice key points explained in the book Is based on a comprehensive analysis of a research corpus containing 400+ research articles in various areas of public policy and economics

Building on recent work in rhetoric and composition that takes an historical materialist approach, Dangerous Writing outlines a political economic theory of composition. The book connects pedagogical practices in writing classes to their broader political economic contexts, and argues that the analytical power of students’ writing is prevented from reaching its potential by pressures within the academy and without, that tend to wed higher education with the aims and logics of “fast-capitalism.” Since the 1980s and the “social turn” in composition studies and other disciplines, scholars in this field have conceived writing in college as explicitly embedded in socio-rhetorical situations beyond the classroom. From this conviction develops a commitment to teach writing with an emphasis on analyzing the social and political dimensions of rhetoric. Ironically, though a leftist himself, Tony Scott’s analysis finds the academic left complicit with the forces in American culture that tend, in his view, to compromise education. By focusing on the structures of labor and of institutions that enforce those structures, Scott finds teachers and administrators are too easily swept along with the inertia of a hyper-commodified society in which students---especially working class students---are often positioned as commodities, themselves. Dangerous Writing, then, is a critique of the field as much as it is a critique of capitalism. Ultimately, Scott’s eye is on the institution and its structures, and it is these that he finds most in need of transformation.