Crisis Discourse Research Articles

Culture, politics, aesthetics as turmoil and quest in pamuk’s works

The paper is an investigation of eastern and western influence on culture, politics and aesthetics in Pamuk’s selected works. The works generate a deconstruction of the persistent class, alternative cultural hierarchy. The works have epistemological perspective. The larger question in the novels are battle between individual self and cultural self, which is influenced by the regional fusion of two continents and influence of two alternative cultures on Turkey for generations. Pamuk inculcates postmodern techniques of West and the Eastern allusions/parables from Islamic literature in his novels, which adds to the universal acceptance or celebrations of his themes and works. The paper is a study of political, cultural and aesthetic turmoil giving birth to varied nature of quests. Pamuk’s protagonists hear a call and it is the onset of their individual nature of quest where they face multiple dilemmas affecting various aspects of their lives. They seek resolution and this journey of dilemmas and individual or collective efforts of the protagonists to find solace is vividly by the author. The objective of the paper is the study of the discourse of identity crisis of the heroes and the factors influencing the construction of their dilemmas and resolution offered. It shall study the journey of the heroes on quest in the pursuit of love, knowledge or self.

ZOMBIE AS A FLESH OF (POST)CAPITALISM

The article is devoted to the consideration of the image of zombie in two contexts, which are, firstly, the transformation of capitalist figures of production and consumption, and secondly, the transformation of desire and sensuality. Two models of socio-philosophical interpretation of zombies related to the development of capitalism are revealed: the consumer and the proletarian. They concern the discourse of the economic crisis and the disgust to “irrational consumption” and the discourse of the exploitation of the worker by dead labor. It is noted that the image of zombie embodies total alienation, loss of social connection, which is based on emotional affinity, intimacy and affectivity. The figure of zombie is seen as the opposite of the Enlightenment model of human existence, which is characterized by a fundamental multiplicity, sensitivity and taste, which became the basis of a market economy. The image of zombie represents the fear of dissolving human diversity in the identity of desire and corporeality, which is destroyed and appears as “the same”. Zombies embody the instinct and infectivity of being. They denote “naked life”, the signs of which are the right to kill or exploit them. On the other hand, zombies are the embodiment of Use value: an empty post-capitalist, post-proletarian and post-consumer “life” reduced to pure need. Zombies figure represents the inner contradiction of (post)capitalism: on the one hand, the fear of renewing a Labour power that is no longer able to work, and on the other, the fear of losing sensual diversity that suspends the endless process of consumption. Thus, the fear of zombie is a defensive reaction to capitalist existence. On the other hand, it is an adjustment of consciousness, when the coercion to work and consume is based on the fear of becoming a zombie, in the presence of an unconscious willingness to destroy those whom capitalism excludes as zombies.

КРИЗОВІ ДИСКУРСИ ЛІБЕРАЛЬНОЇ ДЕМОКРАТІЇ: ЄВРОПЕЙСЬКИЙ ДОСВІД ТА УКРАЇНСЬКІ ПЕРСПЕКТИВИ (ФІЛОСОФСЬКІ РОЗДУМИ)

Виокремлено кризові дискурси ліберальної демократії: симулятивний, екзистенційний, аксіологічний. Симулякр ліберальної демократії ще більше розмиває та знесилює соціально-політичну реальність та поступово відбувається деструкція соціальної та історичної пам’яті. Криза ліберальної демократії набуває екзистенційного забарвлення через її однозначний та безумовний соціальний статус. Суспільство тут лише «зачиняє пастку», з одного боку, надаючи громадянину відчуття важливості для держави, а з іншого – зводячи нанівець можливість для людини об’єктивного сенсу та конкретного визначення на рівні громадянського існування. Криза ліберальної демократії з одного боку конституює деформацію ціннісних орієнтирів людини та суспільства, а з іншого – надає можливість трансформації ціннісних векторів задля подолання кризи.

Crisis discourses: Poland and Portugal in english language media

Taking the whole European Union (EU) as background, the present study discusses the way a corpus of English language media articles has represented the 2009-2016 crisis and austerity policies in Poland and Portugal, the home countries of the authors. The selected corpus comprises 68 articles from mainstream English language media, namely the newspapers The Financial Times, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the economics magazine The Economist. The theoretical framework draws on the Bakhtinian notions of polyphony and heteroglossia, as well as on Gramsci's theory of hegemony. It thus juxtaposes and interprets the different voices and conflicting meanings within crisis discourses, relating them to issues of power and ideology. The Conclusion shows that despite rhetorical diversity, common politically contingent voices were identified which underpin the discourses dominating the crisis narrations in these two economically and geographically distant countries of the European Union.

Starbucks’ Racial-Bias Crisis: Toward a Rhetoric of Renewal

ABSTRACTThis paper seeks to reframe crises as moments of organizational opportunity instead of moments of organizational threat. The predominant crisis communication approach involves defensive posturing, image restoration and corporate apologia strategies to protect and defend organizations in crisis. Some organizations, however, engage in crisis discourse that focuses on evolution and growth instead of issues like blame and liability. This paper employs Robert Ulmer, Timothy Sellnow and Matthew Seeger’s discourse of renewal to examine Starbucks’ crisis response to the April 12, 2018, arrests of two black men waiting for a friend in one of the coffee chain’s Philadelphia locations. While Starbucks has not characterized it as such, the organization demonstrated a renewing response. Through the Starbucks case, this paper illustrates how crises challenge organizational practices and offer platforms for organizational rebirth, development and long-term survival. Through Kantian ethics, this paper suggests duty-driven responsibilities for enacting renewal discourse and practical implications.

Energizing Finance: The Energy Crisis, Oil Futures, and Neoliberal Narratives

This article examines the origins and development of oil futures trading in the United States to demonstrate the important role that energy concerns played in the financialization of the U.S. economy in the 1970s and 1980s. The article contextualizes the emergence of oil futures contracts by narrating the longer history of U.S. futures markets and financialization. It also explores the halting development of oil futures contracts, and analyzes the three kinds of legitimating narratives that accompanied oil futures trading: reason, the primacy of price, and power. As a whole, the article argues that energy crisis discourse contributed significantly to the financialization of the U.S. economy by framing futures markets as the only viable solution to the energy crisis. The much-celebrated oil futures contracts on the New York Mercantile Exchange supported and marked the emergent power of financial thinking as the United States entered a neoliberal era.

Witnessing in crisis contexts in the social media age: the case of the 2015 Tianjin blasts on Weibo

This study explores how the act of witnessing takes distinctive discursive shape in social media in the context of large-scale disasters or crisis events. Drawing upon a set of microblogs posted on China’s most widely used social media platform, Weibo, immediately after one of China’s most serious industrial accidents, this study shows how witnessing manifests itself through individual eyewitness accounts foregrounding personal experience but constrained within Weibo’s standard protocol of 140 Chinese characters. Often blending word and image, these accounts are examined using methodologies drawn from discourse analysis. On this basis, we argue that witnessing in social media in China not only demonstrates strong participatory, connective, and self-reflexive characteristics. It also opens up new possibilities for various patterns of meaning, which, when appropriated by other social media users, constitute a public testimony that can challenge official discourses of crisis in China.

Framing the Eurozone crisis in national parliaments: is the economic cleavage really declining?

ABSTRACT While it is undisputed that the Eurozone crisis has contributed to the politicization of European integration, the longer-term impact of this politicization on the structure of political conflict in Europe remains unclear. This article engages with research findings which argue that the crisis has contributed to a shift of political cleavages in Europe, from an economic (left vs. right) to a transnational (pro- vs. anti-EU) divide. We examine whether there is any evidence of such a shift in parliamentary debates about the crisis in four Eurozone states (Germany, Austria, Spain and Ireland) between 2009 and 2014. We use a combination of content and cluster analysis to identify the discursive frames that parliamentarians employed to make sense of the crisis, and then assess which factors affected how these frames were used. Our findings show that the economic (left-right) cleavage remained highly influential in shaping the four parliaments’ crisis discourse.

Contested solidarity in the Euro crisis and Europe’s migration crisis: a discourse network analysis

ABSTRACT The article analyses the solidarity discourse in the Euro crisis and Europe’s migration crisis and examines how meanings of solidarity are framed and which political parties participate in these debates. The discourse coalition and coalition magnet approaches are combined to study the two discourse dynamics of demanding solidarity (migration crisis) or being criticised for not showing solidarity (Euro crisis) in the German media discourse. By applying the discourse network methodology, the interdependence of framing and actor visibility is analysed. It is demonstrated that solidarity is linked to austerity by a conservative party discourse coalition in the Euro crisis. The migration crisis discourse is shaped by one large discourse coalition, arguing for political solidarity. In 2015, political solidarity is challenged by security and demarcation claims in the migration crisis. The study contributes to the ideational research framework and demonstrates the different trajectories of solidarity in Europe in hard times.

Abundance or crisis? Transformations in the media ecology of Swedish cultural journalism over four decades

The aim of this study is to map and scrutinize developments within Swedish cultural journalism, with a particular focus on transformations in genres, text types and thematic repertoires. Drawing on a constructed week sample from press, television and radio during four decades (1985, 1995, 2005, 2015), we address three aspects of ‘the crisis discourse’ of cultural journalism: (1) the potential decline in cultural coverage due to economic cutbacks and downsized cultural desks; (2) cultural journalism’s perceived ‘quality crisis’ connected to transformations of thematic repertoires; and (3) the alleged decline of cultural expertise related to changes in cultural journalism’s generic structures. The study makes a unique contribution to cultural journalism scholarship by identifying media-specific differences and complementary relationships between media forms, building on media ecology and genre theory. In contrast to the crisis discourse, results show that cultural journalism has expanded significantly through popularization and thematic and generic diversification, but the transformations are different in press, radio and television due to differing role positions in the larger media ecosystem. In addition, some parts of the cultural journalism media ecology appear to be endangered.

Cuts without conflict: The use of political strategy in local health system retrenchment in Sweden

Disinvestment in health services is seen as challenging by decision-makers as the public usually reacts strongly to rationing and retrenchments. Drawing on the literature on welfare state retrenchment – the reduction of public expenditure by cutting costs or spending – this article explores the development and implementation of a comprehensive retrenchment programme in one local health system in Sweden (a so-called region). According to theory, retrenchments are both electorally risky and institutionally difficult. Nonetheless, they take place and in the local health system we investigate, without too extensive public protest and without decision-makers having to resign. The main question in this qualitative study is: why and how was it possible to make such comprehensive retrenchments despite being unpopular and facing many political and institutional barriers? Interviews with 18 local politicians and public servants were carried out between January 18 and April 3, 2017, and analysed from the perspective of political strategy. They showed that the serious budget deficit, and a shared understanding of what the region's problems were, are important explanations for why the retrenchment programme was possible to develop and implement. Based on a thorough internal review of the health system, a crisis discourse developed which partly depoliticized the retrenchment programme. Justification and framing are keys to how it was possible. The retrenchment programme was justified by arguing that current service provision exceeded that in comparable regions, and framed as necessary saving the local health system and enhancing quality. Important strategies were thus to redefine the retrenchments and to blame-share, the latter through politicians and public servants claiming responsibility together after involving the clinic managers. In sum, our study shows that the retrenchment literature and theories on political strategy may be fruitfully applied to the health-care sector as well. By studying the local level, our findings contribute to the retrenchment literature, indicating that political strategy at the local level is more about justification and blame sharing, than blame avoidance.

Gender Equality in European Union Development Policy in Times of Crisis

Gender equality is firmly established on the European Union development policy agenda. However, a series of interrelated crises, including migration, security and climate change, are becoming more prominent in European Union development policy. This article asks whether development objectives have been subsumed under these crisis-driven European Union priorities, whether this is compatible with efforts to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment through development cooperation and whether it will affect the ability to keep gender equality high on the European Union’s development policy agenda. The theoretical framework draws on horizontal policy coordination and nexuses. The analysis of European Union development policy documents shows how migration, security and climate change are constructed as crises, how they intersect in various nexuses and how gender intersects with each of these nexuses. This research finds that gender equality is absent from the migration–security–climate nexuses, which are increasingly driving development policy priorities. The article argues that it is quite straightforward to keep gender equality on the development policy agenda, but it is difficult to retain a focus on gender equality when multiple policy areas intersect. The research suggests that the discourse of crisis has blocked the way, and this will have an impact on the European Union’s internal and external activities.

A performative history of STEM crisis discourse: the co-constitution of crisis sensibility and systems analysis around 1970

ABSTRACT The STEM crisis discourse enacts a crisis sensitivity that governs the way of thinking and feeling about change in relation to techno-science. This article examines how this crisis sensitivity is historically co-constituted with systems analysis to configure the global, the future, and the accountable subjects as the objects of techno-scientific control in the early postcolonial era. The analytical approaches are historical epistemology and performativity theory. The discussions rely on the archives and publications of international institutes (e.g. UNESCO, the Club of Rome, IIASA) that adopted systems analysis to diagnose the ‘world crisis’ in and beyond education around 1970. The article argues systems analysis enacted a techno-scientific vision and calculation that collapsed the global and the future into a state of crisis, self-referentially enunciated itself as the intellectual and moral solution, and differentially included particular subjects as latent threats to the whole world for preemptive control.

We owe ourselves to debt: Classical Greece, Athens in crisis, and the body as battlefield

Since 2009, Greece has been hit by a severe economic recession followed by harsh austerity policies, gradual impoverishment, and ultimately social collapse. This article investigates the cultural landscape of the so-called ‘Greek crisis’, focusing on Athens, the nation’s capital, and the ways the crisis discourse employs biopolitical technologies of dispossession and displacement in order to generate an intensified breed of body-politics. The article’s main case study is documenta 14, a blockbuster exhibition of contemporary art organized in Athens in 2017, seemingly elaborating on the ideas of debt – classical and modern – though in fact promoting neoliberal approaches to public economy and life. The idea of ‘classical debt’, the article concludes, continuously reiterated by both Greece’s defenders as well as its most unforgiving critics, rather than acting as an emancipatory force, ends up producing a public consisting of silent bodies, trapped in highly romanticized discourses of the past and ultimately unable to defend themselves. This tension, however, also provokes narratives and gestures made of contradictions and ambiguity, difficult to map and monitor according to established research protocols.

„Muutume masinateks“. Tehnoloogia ja soolistatud kehad ameerika modernismis / “We Twiddle … and Turn into Machines”: Technology and gendered bodies in American modernism

„Muutume masinateks“. Tehnoloogia ja soolistatud kehad ameerika modernismis / “We Twiddle … and Turn into Machines”: Technology and gendered bodies in American modernism

Sisyphus, crisis discourse, and the theory-practice gap in physical education: a polemic

ABSTRACTThe constant and perennial plea by academics in the field to reform or change physical education share some similarities with the myth of Sisyphus from Greek mythology. Just as Sisyphus was condemned to an eternity of endless frustration of rolling an enormous stone up a mountain as punishment for trying to be too clever, we argue that if the physical education profession continues down the path of more of the same unquestioned assumptions surrounding notions of change will be tantamount to being condemned like Sisyphus was to the torment of the stone. Part of the problem as we see it relates to insufficiently rigorous engagement with theory, and hence why we argue that physical education could benefit from a shift from a disproportionate focus on practice or practices to theory as a means to closing the gap between theory and practice. We do understand that our position may be uncontroversial to some; however, we equally understand that there will be many who will find our position controversial in the field. From our position, this has become an unavoidable problem due to the inherent way in which the relationship between theory and practice is understood differently by academics, teachers, and other actors in this context.

Gridlock Politics

Abstract Anwar Sadat's “open door” policy involved the forceful promotion of an American-inspired car society. This essay traces the development of Egypt's motorscape by recounting the first eight decades of automobility in Egypt. Focusing on the 1970s, it suggests that the increasing number of vehicles on the road and consequent congestion were the result, and apparently also the driving force, of politics at every level: from class and gender to geopolitics. In particular, the adoption of the car during the infitah was informed by a discourse of demographic and urban crisis that it was meant to solve yet actually aggravated. Contrasting the private car to the public bus—and stressing zahma, population control, and regulation of sexuality—brought to the fore gendered aspects of automobility and especially sexual harassment rather than issues such as energy efficiency, traffic accidents, and environmental pollution, which would describe the car as the more dangerous vehicle. This contextualization helped neutralize the immoral connotations cars carried over from the prerevolutionary era. Against this background, Egypt's motorscape was partitioned into public and private, dangerous and safe, humiliating and respectable, in a way that made the bus stand for all the former connotations and the car for all the latter.

Economic crisis and Greek crisis discourse

Abstract The 2008 economic crisis signalled a new era for European and global politics and introduced a new ‘economic crisis discourse’, which has emerged as an attempt to explain, justify, criticize and interpret economic crisis. It has introduced new terms and constructed new meanings to political life. Media economic crisis discourse has been a decisive factor in peoples’ understanding of economic crisis. The paper studies the construction and media narratives of economic crisis discourse through an analysis of articles published by The Economist during the ‘peak years’ of the early Greek economic crisis (2009–2011). The analysis follows Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985) discourse theory and reveals the ‘nodal points’ of Greek crisis discourse as they are presented in the articles of The Economist. The paper underlines the importance of media discourse during crisis periods, in which information dissemination and news framing may crucially affect citizens, policies and societies in general.

Identity construction and negotiation in Chinese political discourse

Abstract Based on identity theory and previous studies of crisis discourse, this paper systematically analyzes the process of identity construction and negotiation between political discourse and social discourse representing the event of a fire at Xinjian Village, Daxing District in the southern suburb of Beijing. It is found that in the first phase, the political discourse focuses on the meta-discourse of “for Renmin’s sake, we carry out a campaign of thorough inspection, cleaning-up and rectification to eliminate safety hazards.” In the second phase of the event the Renmin category is then represented concretely as “residents”, “migrant workers”, “people who need help” and so on. These discursive practices have constructed a relatively acknowledged identification with the social groups concerned, and thus positively affect the governance and management of this crisis event.

Framing Solidarity in the Euro Crisis: A Comparison of the German and Irish Media Discourse

ABSTRACT The article analyses the framing of solidarity in the Euro crisis discourse. Previous research has argued that the Euro crisis and the debtor–creditor constellation highlights the political conflict around solidarity in the EU. Based on a discursive institutionalist framework, the article investigates the different meanings of solidarity as well as the constellation of actors in Germany and Ireland from 2010 to 2015. Whilst Germany as the biggest creditor country is understood as a potential giver of solidarity, Ireland as a debtor country is conceptualised as a potential receiver of solidarity. The discourse network methodology is applied to study the relation of framing and actor presence. The findings show that the ideational structure of both discourses is different, but the actor constellation is rather similar. In particular, solidarity and austerity are linked in the German discourse, while the Irish discourse focuses predominantly on responsibility and solidarity, and less so on austerity. The actor constellation shows a dominance of German actors in both countries, highlighting the central position of Germany within the Eurozone. The article is the first study to analyse the construction of solidarity in the Euro crisis and contributes to the study of solidarity in hard times.