| This dissertation uses rhetorical circulation as a lens through which to investigate how messages about poverty -- in particular, an approach to homelessness called Housing First -- spread in advocacy and policymaking processes. I trace the rhetoric of Housing First across local and national levels, incorporating more than 20 interviews with people involved in different aspect of its spread. These interviews supplement close textual analysis of a wide variety of artifacts, including federal notices of funding availability, video of community meetings, newspaper coverage, advocates' training materials, scholarly research materials supporting Housing First, and more.;Each chapter examines a different nodal point in the model's circulation, from the local to the national, and back to the local. Likewise, each makes a different theoretical argument. The first chapter elucidates how rhetorics of consumer choice (even when rooted in mental health advocacy) cannot be separated from market-based discourse. The second looks at how money functions as both justification and inducement for the adoption of Housing First, arguing that material currency has a performative function in public deliberation. The third challenges full transparency as a democratic ideal in light of "Not-In-My-Backyard" responses to Housing First.;With this dissertation, I contribute to a growing body of rhetorical scholarship that demonstrates that studies concerned with power dynamics and the material impacts of rhetoric can also contribute to our understanding of how rhetoric itself works. Studying rhetorical circulation in policymaking contexts improves our understanding of public deliberation and of rhetoric as a dynamic force. This manuscript demonstrates how advocates of progressive policies can adopt dominant ideologies (even as they may also resist them) to push those policies through conservative institutions and persuade individuals. By identifying key developments and transformations in the spread of Housing First, I also contribute to our understanding of how people gain and lose rhetorical agency, how imagined publics shift with changes in messaging, and how different types of texts garner or lose prominence in public policymaking processes. |
