Workplace Catering at the Dolní Rožínka Uranium Mines: Discursive Strategies in a Socialist Enterprise

Purpose– This paper aims to provide a situated critical discourse analysis of the public debate around India’s 2013 National Food Security Act (NFSA), describing its rhetorical characteristics and the context within which it has taken place.Design/methodology/approach– Using Wodak’s (2001) Discourse Historical Approach (DHA), the authors examine media coverage of the NFSA, attending to perspectivization, intensification and mitigation and representational and argumentational strategies. The authors also consider this coverage in light of its intratextual, intertextual, situational and wider socio-political and economic contexts. The corpus consists of 29 English-language Indian newspaper and magazine articles, published in print and online between 2011 and 2014.Findings– This paper explains the rhetorical purchase of the term “food security” in contemporary Indian public policy debates by comparing the leftist, right wing and centrist arguments.Research limitations/implications– Owing to the detailed qualitative analysis presented here, the corpus is necessarily limited in size. Newspaper articles contributed by one of the authors were omitted from the study.Originality/value– The DHA claims to be an interdisciplinary framework, but relatively few studies involve true cross-disciplinary research. By contrast, this study relies on close collaboration by scholars active in economics and applied linguistics – thus, demonstrating both the potential for, and the value of, working coherently across academic disciplines. Also, unlike most DHA studies, which interrogate dominant discourses, this paper compares diverse discourses competing for influence.

This contribution presents two case studies: Poznań in Poland and New Delhi in India, focusing on the media coverage surrounding the re-naming of one street in each location. We apply a uniform method – the Discourse Historical Approach – to analyse newspaper articles, below-the-line comments and Internet forum discussions. As symbolic marking of the territory can be recruited for a political agenda going beyond memory politics, this article not only investigates the public controversy surrounding the (re-)naming of the cityscape, but also addresses the questions of how these debates link inter-discursively with other issues in contemporary politics, such as the independence of the judiciary in Poland and social justice in India.

The objective of this research was to find out the effects of the disclosure of Sustainability Reporting including the economic performance disclosure, environmental performance disclosure and social performance disclosure, and also the board involvement on the firm value. Sustainability disclosure is the company's effort to make the company accountable for all stakeholders, for the company’s performance goals towards sustainable development. The population of the research was the companies listed in the Indonesia Stock Exchange for the period of 2015-2017. This research uses the content analysis method, namely the quantitative research, to find out the relationship between one independent variable (sustainability disclosure, covers economic, environmental and social performance disclosure) and the dependent variable (company performance) with the board involvement as the moderating variable. The results of the research indicated that the board involvement moderated the disclosures of economic, environmental and social performance towards the value of the company. Further research indicated that the disclosure of Sustainability Reporting that included the economic, environmental, and social performance disclosure, had significant effect to the company value, but it is negative. The negative value shows that the cost spent for the disclosure of the Sustainability Reporting is still greater than its effect towards of the firm value. Keywords: Sustainability Disclosure, Economic Performance, Environmental Performance, Social Performance, Board Involvement, Company Performance, and Content Analysis. DOI : 10.7176/JESD/10-10-21 Publication date :May 31 st 2019

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) stands on the shoulder of giants – different giants – in order to answer how its critique, its ethico-moral stance, is theoretically grounded and justified. Concerning this question, this article explores the role of the Frankfurt School in the discourse–historical approach (DHA). Although references to the Frankfurt School can regularly be found in the DHA's canon, I argue that an even more comprehensive discussion would help in combating accusations of the DHA being unprincipled and politically biased, and further enrich the DHA's toolkit for empirical analysis. After reviewing existing references to the Frankfurt School, I discuss this intellectual tradition – from Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno's The dialectic of enlightenment to Jürgen Habermas's language-philosophy – showing to what extent it can(not) ground the DHA's emancipatory and socially transformative aims. Thereby, I illustrate how the DHA's critical standard is not simply based on a coincidental, though progressive, consensus but theoretically justified.

The relation between society and health is challenging and important for two complementary reasons. For economists and those concerned with social policy, health may be a marker, a way of keeping score of how well the society is doing in delivering well-being. In public health, our concern is not with economic performance, of which mortality may be an indicator, but with health status of which economic and social performance may be determinants. That is to say, I am concerned with how to lower mortality rates and improve health, and am therefore interested in the major influences that shape it. In this con- text, I am concerned with economic performance only as a means to an end.

IntroductionThe aim of the paper is to examine the role of income inequality and redistribution for income-related health inequalities in Europe. This paper contributes in two ways to the literature on macro determinants of socio-economic inequalities in health. First, it widens the distinctive focus of the research field on welfare state regimes to quantifiable measures such as social policy indicators. Second, looking at income differences completes studies on socio-economic health inequalities, which often analyse health inequalities based on educational differences.MethodsUsing data from the European Values Study (2008/2009), 42 European countries are available for analysis. Country characteristics are derived from SWIID, Eurostat, and ILO and include indicators for income inequality, social policies, and economic performance. The data is analysed by using a two-step hierarchical estimation approach: At the first step—the individual level—the effect of household income on self-assessed health is extracted and introduced as an indicator measuring income-related health inequalities at the second step, the country-level.ResultsIndividual-level analyses reveal that income-related health inequalities exist all across Europe. Results from country-level analyses show that higher income inequality is significantly positively related to higher health inequalities while social policies do not show significant relations. Nevertheless, the results show the expected negative association between social policies and health inequalities. Economic performance also has a reducing influence on health inequalities. In all models, income inequality was the dominating explanatory effect for health inequalities.ConclusionsThe analyses indicate that income inequality has more impact on health inequalities than social policies. On the contrary, social policies seemed to matter to all individuals regardless of socio-economic position since it is significantly positively linked to overall population health. Even though social policies are not significantly related to health inequalities, the power of public redistribution to impact health inequalities should not be downplayed. Social policies as a way of public redistribution are a possible instrument to reduce income inequalities which would in turn lead to a reduction in health inequalities.

Video Abstract: http://bit.ly/ocGEkd

Introduction Developments in Poland in January- June 1989 set the stage for the final breakdown of the Soviet hegemony in Europe, whereas the launching of the Balcerowicz stabilisation-cum-transformation program paved the way for establishing foundations for competitive markets in Poland and other postcommunist countries. Three historic events, each overshadowing the earlier one, heralded the change: 1) the decision of the Polish Communist Party in January to start round table negotiations with Solidarity, which amounted to formal recognition of the opposition by the communist government; 2) signing of the round table agreements on 5 April that outlined a series of measures to assure an orderly transition to democracy; and 3) limited free elections held on 4 June. Their combined outcome was the emergence of the first government with a non-communist prime minister in Central Europe since the communist takeovers in 1948-49. Yet, Poland's lead in political change quickly evaporated as other post-communist countries held free elections and subsequently moved faster to dismantle vestiges of communism in both polity and economy. Twenty years after the demise of communism, Poland lags behind some of its Central European counterparts. The quality of democracy in Poland leaves much to be desired when assessed against states such as the Czech Republic, Estonia and Slovenia, hereafter referred to as the Luxembourg group (which also includes Hungary).1 In the 2000s, various international rankings of the quality of democracy rather consistently placed Poland at the bottom of the Luxembourg group as well as behind Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia but still above Bulgaria and Romania. In 2009, the ranking of Poland improved to the level of Hungary - above Latvia and Slovakia - but was still below the Czech Republic and Slovenia.2 Simultaneously, Poland's initially rapid economic growth performance ceased to shine; an impressive resistance to the world economic slowdown in 2008-09 appears to be the result of the failure to fully take advantage of the unprecedented world economic boom in 2000-07 rather than the quality of its institutions and policies. While we do not offer an unambiguous answer as to why Poland ceased to be a leader in political transition, a plausible explanation is likely to be associated with the uniqueness of Poland's mode of dismantling communism leading to a 'pacted' transition of the type described by O'Donnell and Schmitter.3 In contrast with other Central European post-communist countries, in Poland, gradualism - then justified in terms of dealing with uncertainty concerning Soviet reaction as well as in terms of buying the support of communists opposed to negotiations with Solidarity - characterised the political transition. The arrangements that allowed the communist establishment to stay in power, combined with divisions and fratricidal struggles within Solidarity, have crowded out from the political agenda the much more important issue of designing the constitutional underpinnings for a democratic society and state. Narrow interest groups championed procedural designs that could give them an upper hand in political struggles but had no interest in a serious constitutional debate. Similarly, the pacted transition with safeguards for the communist establishment impeded the emergence of high-quality democratic institutions. This political gradualism has contrasted rather sharply with Poland's radical approach to the dismantling of central planning and its rapid transition to an open market economy. Thus, as we show in this chapter, Poland's economic performance appears to have been superior to its political one, although it was inferior in the 2000s to most of other new 2004 EU members despite the world economic slowdown in 2008. Quality of Democracy and Institutional Design in Comparative Perspective Since the collapse of communism, which has highlighted the importance of institutions and political arrangements for economic growth and prosperity, the 'quality of democracy' has regularly been the subject of international surveys. …

Purpose: To evaluate the universe of published articles that propose frameworks about the relationship between green supply chain management (GSCM) and performance in the period from 1995 to 2014, in order to propose a conceptual model that can be applied to future studies, considering the green profile besides the practices of GSCM and performance. Originality/gap/relevance/implications: The investigation revealed a lack of relationship among the organizations' profile, its environmental, economic and operational performance and GSCM practices. Key methodological aspects: The relationship among constructs was established through bibliometric analysis obtained in the models/frameworks of GSCM practices and performance extracted from the databases "ProQuest", "EBSCO", "JSTOR", "Web of Science" and "Scopus". Further, the content analysis and network analysis were then performed. Summary of key results: GSCM internal and external practices, environmental performance, economic performance and operational performance were revealed as main topics addressed in GSCM. Moreover, it was noted that studies on internal practices prevailed over those addressed to other practices. Key considerations/conclusions: The models studied did not consider whether the corporate green profile could improve the performance of the organization. Therefore, they did not simultaneously measure environmental, economic and operational performance. It was concluded that the addition of the green profile in conjunction with GSCM practices and performance allows for a more in-depth analysis of the degree of a company's involvement with GSCM, as well as its intended objectives and results achieved in the future.

This chapter presents some basic principles of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and especially of the Discourse Historical Approach (DHA). It deals with the intricate and complex relationships between argumentation theory and the DHA via the (salient) concept of topos/topoi. One of the main aims of this chapter is to elaborate the importance of the Aristotelian topos for the argumentation strategies of the DHA and to discuss the influence of Aristotelian syllogism in modern argumentation scholarship. Thereafter, in this chapter also discusses the concept of fallacy and its function in media discourses; furthermore, it deals with the links between the Aristotelian tradition of endoxon and the concept of hegemonic knowledge.

Social Insurance Reforms in Egypt: Needed, Belated, Flopped

China’s obsession with “stability maintenance” (weiwen) is witnessed in its rapidly increasing budget allocation to internal security in recent years. Vast institutions for maintaining stability, such as the Ministry of State Security, People’s Armed Police, public security bureaus, and urban administrative and law enforcement agencies (chengguan), are being constructed or expanded. However, as Gramsci would have put it, securing “cultural hegemony” in a society is more durable than the use of sheer force. In this book, Peter Sanby-Thomas argues that economic performance and nationalism, the two commonly identified sources of legitimacy for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), are inadequate, and suggests an additional ideational source of legitimacy; namely, the use of stability discourse. Drawing from key editorials and commentaries in the People’s Daily, Sandby-Thomas examines how the official stability discourse responded to the three large-scale demonstrations in the past 20 years—the Tiananmen protests of 1989, the Falungong protests of 1999, and the “anti-Japan” demonstrations in 2005. In his research, Sandby-Thomas engages in what is called the “discourse-historical approach” of critical discourse analysis, in which he undertakes intensive analysis of selected texts with appropriate analysis of the context of the texts as well. The book begins with a discussion of the concept of legitimacy. Sandby-Thomas finds the usual Weberian typology to be overly structuralist, and introduces the “strategic-relational” approach, which attempts to transcend the structure-agency dualism by using concepts such as “strategically selective context” and “strategic actor” in place of the usual categories of structure and agency, in order to avoid overdeterministic accounts of realities. Instead, the concept of strategy allows the interplay between strategic actors and their selective context. The whole point of this discussion is to open up the space for “the inclusion of the ideational” (p. 32), which mediates J OF CHIN POLIT SCI (2014) 19:231–232 DOI 10.1007/s11366-014-9295-1

Although Solidarność was the largest mass movement in the history of after-war Europe, the experience of solidarity during that time in communist Poland has barely been analysed. Drawing on historical accounts of the events in the 1980s and press interviews with Solidarność members, this paper attempts to bridge this gap and identifies key aspects of the experienced solidarity. It argues that the solidarity under communism in Poland derived not only from the common enemy – the communist party state – but was deeply rooted in Catholic social thought and the national identity. It was driven mainly by ideas of protection of human dignity, mutual aid, participation and a demand for “life in truth”. Since 2015, the new social policy has had initially positive impact on income inequality, birth rates and poverty but must be accompanied by further measures to obtain a long-term character.

The arrival of refugees in large numbers has created heated political and public debates across various arenas. Online spaces, specifically social networking platforms, have become a major site for people to express their opinions, feelings, and beliefs toward refugees. Drawing on the principles of corpus analysis, the Discourse-Historical Approach, and multimodal critical discourse analysis, this mixed-methods study explores how online discourses are utilized to portray Ukrainian refugees in Turkish tweets in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The findings showed that the linguistic and visual elements used to characterize Ukrainian refugees, as well as the characteristics attributed to and presumptions and justifications made about them, constructed a positive portrayal, unlike the portrayals of other major refugee groups reported in the literature. This positive representation of Ukrainian refugees as welcomed guests was reinforced through the negative depiction of other refugee groups in Türkiye, particularly Syrians and Afghans, as threats.

This study proposes an experimental method to trace the historical evolution of media discourse as a means to investigate the construction of collective meaning. Based on distributional semantics theory (Harris, 1954; Firth, 1957) and critical discourse theory (Wodak and Fairclough, 1997), it explores the value of merging two techniques widely employed to investigate language and meaning in two separate fields: neural word embeddings (computational linguistics) and the discourse-historical approach (DHA; Reisigl and Wodak, 2001) (applied linguistics). As a use case, we investigate the historical changes in the semantic space of public discourse of migration in the United Kingdom, and we use the Times Digital Archive (TDA) from 1900 to 2000 as dataset. For the computational part, we use the publicly available TDA word2vec models1 (Kenter et al., 2015; Martinez-Ortiz et al., 2016); these models have been trained according to sliding time windows with the specific intention to map conceptual change. We then use DHA to triangulate the results generated by the word vector models with social and historical data to identify plausible explanations for the changes in the public debate. By bringing the focus of the analysis to the level of discourse, with this method, we aim to go beyond mapping different senses expressed by single words and to add the currently missing sociohistorical and sociolinguistic depth to the computational results. The study rests on the foundation that social changes will be reflected in changes in public discourse (Couldry, 2008). Although correlation does not prove direct causation, we argue that historical events, language, and meaning should be considered as a mutually reinforcing cycle in which the language used to describe events shapes explicit meanings, which in turn trigger other events, which again will be reflected in the public discourse.