Discourses Of Responsibility Research Articles

The responsibility of an ethnocentric consumer – nationalistic, patriotic or environmentally conscientious? A critical discourse analysis of “buy domestic” campaigns

PurposeThe study examines the responsibilisation of an ethnocentric consumer in commercial, meta-organisational discourses. In addition to nationalistic and patriotic discourses, the focus is on wider conceptualisations of consumer responsibility.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses critical discourse analysis as a methodological approach to conduct an empirical case study on the texts of two producer-driven labelling campaigns.FindingsThe campaign texts create possibilities for ethnocentric consumption with positioning, argumentative and classificatory discourses. Patriotic responsibilisation is emphasised, together with rationales to take action on environmental concerns.Practical implicationsThe study highlights the responsibility of marketers over their corporate responsibility communication, suggesting that ethnocentric promotions may have the power to alter how consumers take action on various responsibility concerns.Social implicationsThe study surfaces the tensions that responsible consumption can entail for consumers. Indeed, nationalistic and patriotic discourses may alter our understanding of responsibility issues that may seem completely separate from the concepts of nationalism and patriotism.Originality/valueThe paper shows how different organisational texts are deployed to bring about the idea of ethnocentric consumption and how this relates to responsibility discourses, nationalism and patriotism.

Discourse, disciplinary power and ethical subjectivity: Responses to session limits in student counselling

Session limits are widespread in student counselling. The rationale is the need to allocate scarce resources in response to demand. A research study in an Irish university explored how the setting of standardised session limits was discursively constructed by a group of students and counsellors. It sought to privilege the voices of student clients and counsellors in order to explore the effects and consequences of this practice. Foucauldian discourse analysis was used to explore the discourses of both groups of participants and how these might link to their responses to session limits, in this case, six. Discourses endure over time and draw on social and cultural understandings which should be recognisable and can be identified by close examination of language. This study highlighted the discourses of stigma, recovery and personal responsibility, patient or consumer and expert knowledge, which were reflected in the various ways participants positioned themselves. The study draws on Foucault’s concept of disciplinary power and the production of ethical subjectivity to illustrate the dilemmas participants faced in their struggle to respond to session limits. In keeping with a Foucauldian approach, which suggests that the discourses upon which a phenomenon is constructed become more visible at its margins, the student client group had all received more than the standard six sessions. Although counsellors have the formal power to allocate the scarce resource of counselling sessions, the operation of this in practice is nuanced and full of ethical complexity. Disciplinary power is a particular type of power which subjects exercise over their own person, such as the application of rules of conduct and appropriate behaviour. The operation of disciplinary power, ethical subjectivity and discourses are inter-related, impinge on each other in various ways and are often in a state of flux and change.

Yiddish Buenos Aires and the Struggle to Leave the Margins

ABSTRACT Yiddish culture developed in Argentina within the context of a self-perception that figured Buenos Aires as a marginal and peripheral locale on the global Yiddish map. Against this backdrop, Argentine Yiddish culturalists argued for the strengthening of local Yiddish culture with a goal of elevating Buenos Aires's status within the international hierarchies of Yiddish culture. Buenos Aires indeed emerged in the 1920s as a producer of Yiddish cultural contents, maintained networks of international cultural contacts with other Yiddish centers, financially supported Eastern European Yiddish establishments, and hoped that these contacts would allow for solving Buenos Aires reputation problems. The pre-World War II preoccupation with the status of Buenos Aires as a center of Yiddish culture provided a basis upon which post-Holocaust discourse of Argentine Jewish responsibility for the maintenance of Yiddish culture was constructed.

The African Union and Human Protection: Towards a Regional Protection Regime

ABSTRACT A global discourse of protection and responsibility suggests that human protection norms have gained traction. Empirically, this coincides with an observed global reduction in violence. How does this relate to regional protection practices in Africa; is there a regional protection regime? If so, how is this regime constituted, and what does it comprise? Does it shape regional protection practices, and if so, in what ways? This article describes the origins of human protection norms in Africa and assesses the role of the protection regime in shaping regional practices. An analytical framework based on regime theory, that assumes that the emergence of institutions and consistent practice indicates the emergence of a regime, is employed. An empirical survey of institutions and practices suggests the development of a regional protection regime. However, the regional structures differ from, and compete with, preexisting international structures. While the structural prerequisites for a regional protection regime are now in place, several factors interfere with the development of the regional protection regime. The article concludes with several observations. First, the incoherence of global and regional structures results in contradictions and duplication among institutions. Second, a lack of agency of local actors, owing to limited resources and understaffing, inhibits consistent protective responses. Third, resistance by some regional agents to the norms underpinning the protection regime. However, incoherence, inconsistency, and hypocrisy are common features of regimes. Consequently, the fact that the African human protection regime is characterized by incoherence, inconsistency, and hypocrisy undermines neither its significance, nor its ability to shape practice and promote human protection.

Locally situated rights and the ‘doing’ of responsibility for heritage conservation and tourism development at the cultural landscape of Honghe Hani Rice Terraces, China

This study examines the understandings and practices of responsibility for heritage conservation and heritage tourism from a multiple-stakeholder perspective at the Cultural Landscape of Honghe Hani Rice Terraces, a unique World Heritage Site in China. Data were mainly collected via participant observations and semi-structured interviews. Local villagers comprised of ethnic minorities are conserving the heritage landscape in this protected heritage site through their traditional agricultural production and integrated religious and cultural practices. Conflict has arisen over the years due to inequities between the responsibilities they assume to maintain the cultural landscape and their ability to acquire compensation and share tourism’s benefits. Other stakeholders (e.g., local government, the state-owned tourism enterprise, hostel operators) have benefited greatly from tourism to this area, but have not shared the responsibilities of actually maintaining the heritage landscape. The findings also show that an emphasis on the material heritage and technical approach towards the conservation of the heritage landscape by local authorities exacerbate the conflicts as the roles and needs of the local residents are not recognized. The study suggests that heritage responsibility discourses and practices justify and reinforce systematic unequal power relations between local community residents and the state at the Cultural Landscape of Honghe Hani Rice Terraces. The villagers play the greatest role in sustaining the cultural landscapes for current and future generations of Chinese citizens and visitors, yet experience numerous restrictions and impediments in the process. This study reveals complex relationships between the “doing” of responsibilities through local cultural practices of the Hani ethnic minority and their “rights,” both of which are situated locally and socially constructed.

‘It Changed Me As A Man:’ Reframing Military Masculinity in the Army’s ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’ Suicide Prevention Campaign

As the suicide rate among U.S. active-duty troops surpassed the national average for the first time. Responding to what was widely perceived as a crisis brought on in part by indifference to soldiers’ suffering, media coverage increasingly criticized the Army’s hypermasculine culture as a barrier to soldiers needing mental health care faced. The Army’s 2010 ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’ campaign, however, represents one location in which the Army challenged dominant discourses of military masculinity, privileging familial and homosocial responsibility over stoicism, toughness, and self-reliance and casting suicide as a failure to be appropriately masculine.

Dissonant Discourses in Institutional Communications on Sexual Violence

ABSTRACT This article is a discourse analysis of a large Northwestern research university’s official communications regarding sexual violence for a 15-month time frame. Through close reading of these communications, we found that concurrent with high levels of criticism in the spring of 2014 over the university’s handling of a high-profile rape case, the university advanced dissonant discourses of risk and responsibility in its communications regarding sexual violence. At both the institutional and individual levels, these dissonant discourses work to construct who is at risk of committing or experiencing sexual violence, and who is responsible for preventing and responding to it. In conclusion, we discuss possible implications for these dissonant discourses on the future of campus sexual violence prevention and university response.

Comparing Corporate Social Responsibility Discourses in the Letter to Shareholders: The Case of British and Spanish Banks

Comparing Corporate Social Responsibility Discourses in the Letter to Shareholders: The Case of British and Spanish Banks

CSR and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples in Canada

PurposeThis paper aims to highlight blind spots in the discourse of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and stretch the boundaries of existent CSR frameworks within the particular context of resource extraction and with regard to the particular stakeholder group of Indigenous peoples in Canada. This context is important in light of the recommendations from the recent Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), as they relate to initiatives that businesses may take towards reconciliation with Indigenous people.Design/methodology/approachThis paper brings together a disparate body of literature on CSR, Indigenous spiritual values and experiences of extractive practices on Indigenous ancestral lands. Suggestions are offered for empirical research and projects that may advance the project of reconciliation.FindingsCSR may not be an appropriate framework for reconciliation without alteration to its managerial biases and ideological assumptions. The CSR discourse needs to accommodate the “free prior and informed consent” of Indigenous peoples and their spiritual values and knowledge vis-à-vis the land for resource extractive practices to edge towards being socially responsible when they occur on Canadian ancestral territories.Originality/valueCanadian society exists in a post-TRC world, which demands that we reconcile with our past of denying Indigenous values and suppressing the cultures of Indigenous peoples from flourishing. This paper aspires to respond to the TRC’s recommendation for how businesses in the resource extractive industries may engage meaningfully and authentically with Indigenous people in Canada as a step towards reconciliation.

Bullying and interpersonal conflict from a “dialogic event” perspective

Through discussions in class meetings of “concrete situations” experienced by students in their lived experience in and out of the classroom, educators have been encouraged to guide students to understand how bullying applies to their lives, and to learn the degree to which bullying is present or absent in their relationships with their peers (Olweus, 1993). In observations of and interviews about the class meetings at a private, progressive U.S. middle school, student and teacher discourses in response to students’ interpersonal dynamics are found to exist within separate, parallel universes. The teachers’ discourse universe presumes that the lived experience of students can be understood through and guided by abstract, Kantian-like moral universal imperatives – specifically, the imperative to “feel good” and the imperative not to bully. These imperatives supplant dialogue on the events of students’ experiences toward a focus on who the students are becoming rather than who they are now. This discourse of “half-being” maps the students’ experiences upon what is known, predictable, universal, unsurprising and imagined, and assumes that students are not fully responsible for their own or each other’s well-being. By contrast, the students’ discourse on their interpersonal dynamics is characterized by Bakhtin’s (1993) notion of “being-as-event” discourse, which is highly contextualized, unpredictable, and focuses upon everyone’s responsibility to ongoing dramatic and ontologically charged events (either immediate or recursive in nature). The students’ discursive universe is conducive to dialogue, whereas the teachers’ discursive universe supplants the students’ messy, unpredictable and dialogically responsible discourse, thus arresting the possibility for teachers and peers to provide meaningful and authoritative guidance to dialogic events. The reasons for teachers’ attraction to Kantian-like abstract moral universals as well as the consequences of the supplanting of students’ event-filled discourse with the discourse of bullying are discussed

Attack the Data: Agency, Power, and Technopolitics in South African Data Activism

This article deploys a discursive–material analytical framework to trace how perceptions of data power are constructed in urban activist circles against data’s capacity to advance grassroots political goals. By framing South African data activism practices as a form of technopolitics—a concept that foregrounds the coconstitution of politics and technology through their anchoring to normative discourses—this analysis identifies how data are enrolled to substantiate a grassroots political discourse of spatial injustice yet how, through contestation by government officials, the fragility of data as objects of grassroots political power is laid bare. This empirical study of service provision social audits in Johannesburg and Cape Town shows how governments have effectively resisted their findings by singling out the quantitative data as a weak actor, exploiting this as an opportunity to advance their own political discourse of responsibility around service provision. In revealing how grassroots power was eventually strengthened through a strategic redistribution of agencies, the article then advances a nondeterministic understanding of data power and agency as relational, partial, and provisional and enacted through the coconstitution of people, technologies, and discourses, which might resonate with other examples of data activism and further urban data assemblages. These findings add empirical weight to claims of empowerment made in the emerging fields of data activism and data justice, and they raise further important questions for geographers and others interested in the ways in which data are enrolled to enact grassroots politics, as well as the discursive–material dimensions of urban technopolitics more generally. Key Words: data determinism, data imaginary, data justice, spatial justice, technopolitics.

Open for change but closed for transformation: A communicative analysis of managerial corporate social responsibility discourse on the issue of labor

Why do some researchers observe that managerial corporate social responsibility discourse contributes to increased awareness of and commitment to solving global environmental and social issues, while others reveal that the same discourse works to obfuscate and sidetrack positive social transformation? This article tries to bring together these procedural and structural perspectives on corporate social responsibility discourse by introducing a communicative approach, which embeds the critical study of corporate social responsibility discourse in a complex and emerging discursive field. The discursive strategies of managerial corporate social responsibility are therefore as shifting as the discourses it competes with are varied. This article, grounded in Deetz’s theoretical framework of systematically distorted communication and discursive closure, explores the US garment industry’s corporate social responsibility communication on labor-related issues in the global supply chain. I position garment industry corporate social responsibility discourse within broad labor policy debates at the operational, institutional, and structural levels. I find that corporate-initiated corporate social responsibility communication operates through several internally coherent frames: establishing ethical standards, providing essential services, and innovating labor management systems. Each frame responds to alternative discourses about supply chain labor with discursive closure and non-closure strategies, that is, corporations choose to acknowledge, engage, or agree with some alternative discourses, while ignoring, suppressing, or eliding over others. I argue that the pattern of choosing discursive strategies for different types of alternative discourses is important in understanding systematically distorted communication in the context of a complex, fragmented discursive field.

Troubling Discourses of Poverty in Early Childhood in the UK

Poverty in early childhood is pervasive, affecting every aspect of children’s lives. Under current government policies child poverty in the UK is predicted to rise to 40 per cent by 2022. Dominant discourses of poverty have historically focussed on an over‐arching discourse of moral responsibility, essentially relating to notions of deserving and underserving poor. This paper examines how government policy continues to significantly impact on young children and families on low incomes in early childhood and how stigmatised discourses about welfare, work are pervasive. It is argued that discourses of redistribution and children’s rights deserve greater recognition if poverty is to be addressed.

Discursive Constructions of Income Inequality in Neo-liberal Singapore

This article examines the discursive constructions of income inequality in neo-liberal Singapore. While the city-state is touted as a model for smart governance captured in the ‘Singapore model’, the accounts of everyday lived experiences in Singapore depict the unsustainability of the model as a template of development, anchored in the deep inequalities interwoven with the model. This article draws on 34 in-depth interviews with high-, middle- and low-income groups in Singapore, stratified by race and citizenship status to reflect population demographics. The interviews document the ways in which inequalities are rendered meaningful amid the interplays of class, race and citizenship status. Based on grounded theory analysis of everyday accounts of inequality in Singapore, the article attends to the discourses of (a) individual responsibility and the disappearing state, (b) xenophobia and (c) paradoxical responses to government policies, simultaneously interrogating the state-espoused values of multiculturalism, meritocracy and pragmatism.

Diffusion of sustainability and CSR discourse in hospitality industry

PurposeThe authors’ focus is on the way in which sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) discourses and practices emerge in the collaboration of multinational companies (MNCs) with the local hotels in developing country contexts. This paper aims to identify the prevailing institutional orders and logics that bring about CSR and sustainability discourse in tourism industry in Turkey. It also investigates how and to what extent the CSR and sustainability practices align with the local institutional logics and necessities.Design/methodology/approachEmpirical evidence is generated through case studies covering Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. (Hilton), its Turkish subsidiary and a local hotel chain to ensure data triangulation. Primary data were collected through interviews with the executives of the selected case hotels, which was supported by extensive secondary data.FindingsSome components of CSR and sustainability logics developed in the headquarters diffuse into local affiliate hotel, not all. Local affiliate hotels seek to acquire local legitimacy in their host environment, despite a standard format imposed by their headquarters. Local necessities and priorities translate themselves into such initiatives in a very limited way in the affiliates of the Hilton where there is mostly a top-down approach. Similar approach has also been observed in the case of the local hotel which is part of a family business group. Family’s values and family business headquarter shape the CSR and sustainability strategy and the logics reflecting the local component.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper addresses a theoretical and empirical gap by demonstrating the role of MNCs in the diffusion of sustainability and CSR practices, as acknowledged by Forcadell and Aracil (2017). The authors contribute to the critical writings about the positive impact of CSR and sustainability in the context of the MNCs and their subsidiaries, which is not substantiated due to limited empirical evidence. In addition to these contributions to the CSR and sustainability literatures in tourism and hospitality domains, the authors add to the institutional theory by demonstrating the link between institutional orders and institutional logics. They also show the multiplicity of logics that emanate from the differences of logics developed in the headquarters (centrally imposed) and local affiliate organizations (context-specific) and contribute to theory by highlighting tensions.Practical implicationsThis study appeals to management teams and executives of hotels dealing with these issues of tailoring of CSR practices to local necessities. The authors do not only raise awareness of this consciousness but also demonstrate practical application of some of these strategies and prioritization by detecting market specificities and distinctive societal needs. Hotel managers should resist against the headquarter- or family business-driven uniform approach to CSR and sustainability and reflect on corporate policies through checking isomorphic tendencies. This entails being cognizant of local conditions and necessities and respond to them in a flexible and accommodating way. It involves engaging with a full spectrum of stakeholders, including the leadership in headquarters as well as local organizations (e.g. NGOs, suppliers, etc.) and other institutional forces (e.g. state) to align their sustainability and CSR practices with the locally dominant logics. Managers should be aware of certain logics governing CSR and sustainability practices; some of these logics might be constraining critical thinking and innovative practices.Social implicationsManagers should be proactive in interpreting different institutional logics and process them through critical reflection and boundary spanning and mapping of new opportunities. Moreover, MNC hotel executives should be aware of the limitations of a blanket approach toward CSR and sustainability and increase their sensitivity toward local conditions.Originality/valueThrough this study, the authors are able to add further value to the critical writings about the positive contribution of CSR and sustainability in the context of the MNCs and their subsidiaries, which is not substantiated due to limited empirical evidence.

Caring for the future: Climate change and intergenerational responsibility in China and the UK

Debates about intergenerational fairness and resource-use are prominent in diverse international contexts, with a large number of social policy and environmental concerns characterised as having intergenerational dimensions. This includes concerns relating to synchronic equity (how resources are distributed between living generations) and diachronic equity (saving resources for future generations), with climate change being a high-profile example of an issue characterised in this way. In this paper we explore how urban residents perceive their responsibilities towards future generations in two cities based in countries that are major greenhouse gas emitters. Drawing on in-depth interviews with a cross-generational sample of 190 people living in Nanjing, China, and Sheffield, UK, we consider whose future and what aspects of the future people feel responsible for and at what scale. This discussion is situated within an emerging critique of generational discourses that conflate caring for the family and one’s own children with caring for the wider society and for the future. We argue that this has far-reaching implications for how people think about intergenerational responsibility and imagine appropriate courses of action, shaping a particular ‘timescape’ that privileges living generations in close proximity. We find that people in Sheffield tend to be more concerned about social and economic aspects of sustainable development than environmental degradation. People in Nanjing more readily discuss responsibility for environmental stewardship, in the wider political context of state-led and nationalist discourses of collective responsibility, but still appear to struggle with thinking about the future beyond their lifetimes and immediate descendants. We discuss these findings and their implications through the analytical framework of geographies of responsibility, exploring possibilities for a more spatially and temporally extensive scope of care.

NIEDOKOŃCZONA PARTIA SZACHÓW: DEMISTYFIKACJA FIGURY OFIARY I SUBWERSJA DYSKURSU ODPOWIEDZIALNOŚCI W POWIEŚCI DANAS JE SREDA (DZISIAJ JEST ŚRODA) DAVIDA ALBAHARIEGO

Powieść Davida Albahariego Danas je sreda (Dzisiaj jest środa) należy do tych powieści (post)jugosłowiańskiej produkcji literackiej, które od 2010 roku poddają krytycznemu oglądowi polityki ojcostwa w kontekście mechanizmów pamiętania i zapominania. W pracy zanalizowano modele narracyjne oraz strategie dezintegrujące dookreślone pozycje tożsamościowe relacji ojciec – syn w procesie zaświadczania o przeszłości (mowa tu o takich wydarzeniach, jak np. rezolucja Biura Informacyjnego, tworzenie obozu na Nagiej Wyspie czy rozpad Socjalistycznej Federacyjnej Republiki Jugosławii). Figura ojca stawia czytelnika w obliczu procesów neoliberalnej globalizacji i repatriarchalizacji z jednej strony, z drugiej zaś – konieczności zweryfikowania przeszłości i tworzenia kultury pamięci na obszarze postjugosłowiańskim. Gruntowna demistyfikacja figury ofiary zarówno historycznej, jak i politycznej prowadzi do subwersji dyskursu odpowiedzialności, który w odniesieniu do krajów byłej Jugosławii w tytułowej powieści Albahariego konstytuuje się jako utopijny projekt kultury.

The antecedents of corporate social and environmental responsibility discourse in Pakistan: Multiple theoretical perspectives

The primary purpose of the study is to explore the antecedents of corporate social and environmental responsibilities discourse practices in Pakistan. The industry sensitivity, government shareholding, block holder ownership, print media coverage, environmental monitoring programs, and strategic posture are examined as antecedents of corporate social and environmental responsibility practices. A multidimensional theoretical perspective namely stakeholder theory (ST), institutional theory (IT), agency theory (PAT), and legitimacy theory (LT) is used to conceptualize the phenomena. All the four of perspective theories (positive accounting theory, legitimacy theory, stakeholder theory, and institutional theory) claim that there are ‘pressures’ that impact the organization. How much ‘pressures’ are recognized, managed or satisfied differs from one perspective of theory to the other. To estimate the data, this study uses three sets of panel data models, i.e., the pooled ordinary least squares model (POLS) or constant coefficients model, fixed effects (FEM or least squares dummy variable/LSDV model) and random-effects models. The final sample is comprising of 173 firms over eight years from 2011 to 2017. The firms listed in PSX are included in the sample. Overall the findings of the study have shown agreement with the proposed results. However, the study has provided more support to the institutional theory and stakeholder theory. Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility, Stakeholders Theory, Agency Theory, Pakistan

Hysterical inquiry: A methodology emergent through a dutiful daughter

This article theorises hysterical inquiry as an emergent methodology for feminist psychological research. Our example is based on a daughter’s experience of caring for her dying mother. During this process, it becomes apparent that she is only present as caregiver—her mother/daughter encounter has been suppressed by contemporary discourses of caregiving responsibility. Drawing on Freud, Lacan, and feminist theories of psychoanalysis, the daughter undertakes an hysterical quest to locate her missing encounter with her mother. Traversing language structure, she embarks on various journeys, disruptions, and distractions as a network of methodological strategies emerge; speaking eloquently, silently writing, rhythmically weaving her textural engagement with the terrain. As her questions and her scope of inquiry expands, we illustrate the emergence of hysterical inquiry as a viable methodology to address questions treated as invalid within traditional research methodologies.

For the good of the game: diffusing the dangers of football through the National Football League’s ‘A Crucial Catch’ campaign

ABSTRACTThis article examines and critiques the National Football League’s (NFL) ‘A Crucial Catch’ corporate social responsibility campaign and interrogates its use by the NFL to diffuse broader concerns over the social value and health risks of football. The campaign, which until 2017 exclusively raised awareness for breast cancer and emphasized the importance of receiving annual screenings, has often been criticized as a thinly-veiled marketing ploy for the league to appeal to women. Through a deeper examination of the campaign, particularly through a textual analysis of its marketing and promotional materials and its game-day experiences, I argue that the rhetorical and symbolic messages of the campaign, steeped in medical and cultural discourses of family, individual responsibility, heteronormativity, and corporate-science alliances, position the medical dangers of playing football as an obstacle that can be ‘overcome’ through individual determination, much like breast cancer. Furthermore, these messages closely align with discourses that promote football as a necessary and productive institution for the production of socially dominant masculinities, yet do so in a way that responds to both the criticism of unchecked aggression in the sport as well as the threat of uncontrollable black bodies.