Discursive Arena Research Articles

Searching for GloFish®: Aesthetics, Ethics, and Encounters with the Neon Baroque

Fluorescent zebrafish are the first genetically modified animals globally, if unevenly, circulated outside of laboratory environments. GloFish® were developed in Singapore. They are widely sold as popular pets in the United States, but their public sale is banned in Europe and elsewhere. On the trail of these animals, I trace a fragmentary biogeography through ethnographic encounters in the spaces of scientific research, animal exhibits, pet stores, and art galleries, in Europe, the USA, and Singapore. At each site, as the colour, light, and intensities of neon flicker with the potential for life, and concern for animal lives move in and out of focus, I ask: what is the proper way of knowing and living with genetically altered zebrafish? To ask the question is to open up a conversation about the changing constitution of science and space, representation, and reproduction in relation to these new forms of life. To try to answer it demands attention to a baroque patterning of scientific practices, aesthetic sensibilities, ethical responsibilities, and political spatialities. In a discursive arena typically characterised by narratives of linearity—whether of scientific progress or slippery slopes—I suggest the affective sensibilities, theatrical qualities, and unresolved elements of the baroque offer powerful, if ambivalent, resources for reflection on the intersection between the animating aesthetics and turbulent ethics of postgenomic life.

Esfera pública, reconhecimento e minorias: o diálogo Habermas-Fraser

Nancy Fraser outlined a procedural understanding of the recognition it has possibility to fight close political group of authenticity. Jurgen Habermas emphasizes a deliberative model and a historical analysis of the public sphere, through a theoretical learning that culminated in 1992 with Faktizitat und Geltung . We intend to demonstrate, based on Fraser and Habermas, who, before a backdrop of exclusion from official public space, it is necessary to expand discursive arenas, otherwise reproduce and maintain the dominant asymmetries. Fraser, in Scales of Justice , argues for a transnational public sphere in which there is a re-articulation of decision processes, overcoming the boundaries of national states territorially located . We advocate to analyze the evolution of conceptions of the public sphere in Habermas and Fraser along their theoretical trajectories. Habermas, until 2011, there was an ambiguity that oscillated between the thin approach of constitutional patriotism and dense European conception of self .Indeed, we intend to investigate how Habermas, in On the Constitution of Europe - an Essay, Habermas resolves this ambiguity in relation to the understanding of the public sphere, teaching citizens, through digital technology and moral standards, assess European economic structures collating existing institutions to the demands of global justice . We argue, based on Habermas, that such discussions should take effect within a world parliament composed of states and citizens.

Connecting approaches to code-switching in West Africa

This special issue of the International Journal of Bilingualism represents an important contribution to the field of code-switching (CS) not only because it is a joint collaboration between scholars based at the University of Ghana and New York University, but also because it presents new CS data sets. The contributions in this exciting volume constitute a particularly welcome addition to the still growing but already extensive body of literature on CS, for various reasons. Firstly, it brings a new group of scholars into the discursive arena. Secondly, very interesting new data sets are made available, stepping in some cases outside the mould of non-European matrix language/ European embedded language, such as the papers on Kabiye and Logba interacting with Ewe. Thirdly, a broad range of methodological approaches is presented, with techniques ranging from media studies to fine-grained phonological analysis.The language pairs that we learn about in this volume are spoken in Togo (Kabiye-Ewe) in Ghana (Akan-English, Ewe-English, Logba-Ewe) and by Ghanaians in Italy (English-Akan). The structural and sociopragmatic accounts of these data, for the most part, confirm current explanatory models such as Myers-Scotton's (1993a, 2002) matrix language frame (MLF) model, Muysken's (2000) three-way typology of CS patterns involving alternation, congruent lexicalization and insertion, as well as Gumperz (1982:83) we-they codes and Auer's (1984, 1995) language negotia- tion sequences based on conversation-analytic exchange structures.The present commentary reflects on sociolinguistic, pragmatic and structural/psycholinguis- tic issues relevant to the West African context and the specific CS data analysed in this volume. There is wide recognition in the field that the social, historical, political and economic context of language contact is crucial for understanding the way CS gets used and hence the pragmatic, conversational and structural shape of the data. This consensus is expressed by Bullock and Toribio (2009, p. 14), who point out that there are three major strands in the study of CS: the structural, the psycholinguistic and the sociopragmatic 'although, in principle, a full account of CS cannot be achieved without the integration of findings from each of these strands ...'. Each explanatory paradigm (sociopragmatic, structural and psycholinguistic) responds to concrete research interests and each involves quite different epistemologies about what counts as the relevant research questions, but also one must take into account different ontological considera- tions regarding what counts as reliable data. In the case of this commentary, we seek to bring together ideas that will help to make some of the links between sociopragmatic and structural CS in West Africa.Given our separate areas of expertise, the three authors have decided to elaborate separate but interrelated sets of commentaries. Melissa Moyer begins with insights brought out in the papers about the sociolinguistic and sociopolitical context of CS in Ghana and Togo. Peter Auer focuses on aspects of pragmatics and conversational structure and, finally, Pieter Muysken comments more specifically on ideas regarding grammatical processing and language typology.Some sociolinguistic insightsA sociolinguistic account of CS in West Africa must start by taking into account the sociopolitical conditions of contact between European colonizers and the various majority and minority ethnic groups that have existed historically and that have shaped language contact and the CS pairs that are discussed in the present volume. Each one of the articles gives contextual information on the situation of language contact. Dorvlo, in his contribution, provides a rich background account of language contact as relevant to speakers of Logba, an endangered language from the Na branch of Ghana-Togo Mountain (GTM) languages. (The classification of the 14 GTM languages, formerly called the Togo Remnant languages, remains unresolved. …

Timescapes of obesity: coming to terms with a complex socio-medical phenomenon.

Obesity is generally considered to be a growing global health problem that results from changes in the way we live in late modern societies. In this article, we argue that investigating the complexities of contemporary timescapes (i.e. the entanglement of physical, culturally framed and personally experienced times) is of key importance for understanding how 'the obesity phenomenon' is conceptualised, performed and acted upon. Analysing both focus groups and print-media articles, we identified three major groups of temporal narratives that shape our perception of obesity: trajectories, temporalities and timing. Each group of narratives follows a different logic and performs a specific kind of ordering work: ontological work that defines what obesity 'really is', diagnostic work that assesses the state of contemporary society and moral work that assigns responsibility to act. We show how the narratives are assembled into distinct timescapes that distribute agency in specific ways. Combining data from both focus groups and media articles allows us to analyse how these two discursive arenas are intertwined, as it makes visible how stories travel and converge, but also diverge in quite important ways. This highlights the importance of a multi-arena approach to fully understand the tensions between different framings of health-related issues. The article argues that the difficulties of controlling body weight are closely entangled with a perceived lack of control over time on both collective and individual levels. In conclusion, we suggest time-sensitive approaches for the analysis of health phenomena and the development of corresponding policy measures.

Tools of Legitimacy: The Case of the Petrobras Corporate Blog

In this paper we explore how organizations are using new social technologies as tools in the discursive struggle over legitimacy. Using critical discourse analysis, we investigate one such struggle between the corporate blog published by Petrobras, Brazil’s state-owned oil company, and traditional local newspapers. In this particular battle, Petrobras used several discursive strategies to challenge the media’s legitimacy and build its own credibility. Furthermore, we suggest that Petrobras, to underline and to support these strategies, employed a meta-discursive strategy based on a discourse of e-democracy that gave it legitimacy as a discourse producer. In addition, this article contributes to the literature on organizational discourse by uncovering the new social media’s characteristic of hyper-intertextuality that was central in transforming the dynamics of power and resistance and the nature of discursive strategies. Our work analyses how organizations can actively and effectively engage these new tools, which embody socially recognized discourses, to create their own discursive arena and legitimate their counter-narratives.

Narrative of the Pier

“Locating ourselves in the center of en masse urbanization….” Matnog, Sorsogon, Philippines, primarily a coastal area is not exempted from this socio-cultural shift. And in these changes, people, specifically that of the eight Girls, ages 14 to 18 years old living in the periphery of the coast, begin to question this condition of urbanization that has only created varied and severe strands of poverty in their area. “I look at their photographs and listen to their narrative....” Using Alice McIntyre's photovoice, the Girls took photographs of spaces that represent the concepts of poverty and development. I let them speak of these spaces and they begin to talk about “development” and “poverty,” focusing on the existence of the Pier, the Coast and that of their lives. “Spatiality of the Pier....” Taking the postmodern lens, guided by Edward Soja's notions on spatiality is an attempt to view the unfolding of tensions emanating from urban spaces and their representations. The Pier and that of other spaces become the discursive arena that conjugate non-recognition of positions and conditions between the concepts of “poverty” and “development.” With the Pier as the most imposing space emerges ambiguity and blurry vision affect how the Girls perceive, conceive and live in and along these spaces. Development as assumed to be an existing and workable paradigm through urbanization promise alteration of their condition does not exist for them. What happens is that “poverty” becomes the constant wherein time and space are in crisis; and, the spatiality of the Girls becomes fragmented and pulverized. “IT”: For urbanization as a development agenda does not fulfill its promise to the Girls of Matnog, Sorsogon and to us. This knowledge as conceptualized for them place them in a position and state where they no longer recognize what development is. In this discourse, development, urbanization and spaces that represent them all becomes (in)visible that have become (un)recognizable and (un)familiar for the Girls and for us. This (non)recognition place all these concepts and spaces as an IT.

The migration industry of connectivity services: A critical discourse approach to the Spanish case in a European perspective

Abstract Contemporary societies are embedded in three interrelated processes: increasing mobility, digital connectivity and the consolidation of a service-based economy. In this context, a migration industry of connectivity (MIC) emerges as a set of private ventures offering services to migrants to enable them to keep in touch with loved ones at a distance. This article has a double purpose: first, it argues that the MIC is a powerful theoretical concept to analyse contemporary migratory processes. Second, it illustrates this empirically through ten company spokespersons’ accounts and a critical discourse analysis of eighteen corporate online texts of mobile telephony and money transfer services that target immigrants in Europe. Conclusions suggest that these discourses offer migrants alternative subjectivities across the lines of consumption, citizenship and ethnic identity, often neglected within the broader field of public discourses, such as the mass media and parliamentary debate. This situates the MIC as an emerging powerful actor in a discursive arena traditionally dominated by governmental bodies.

Can the claim to foster broad participation hinder deliberation?

This article presents a case study of one of the state Legislatures in Brazil, which has become renowned for promoting several participatory experiments. These newly designed initiatives have changed dramatically some of the procedures of the institution, and have enabled the effective political participation of thousands of civil society actors. However, the claim of fostering broad participation has often led to several shortcomings as regards the possibility of deliberation, as well as of actual participation. In order to develop this argument, the researchers: (1) observed mini-publics held at the institution during the second semester of 2011; and (2) conducted 70 interviews and 4 focus groups (with public servants, deputies and participants). The qualitative analysis of this material has been organized in five sections: selection and mobilization of participants; exchange of ideas; interconnection of discursive arenas; effectiveness; use of information and communication technology.

Mediating connections through materiality: Cultures and communities

Objects and their associations are a means of self-expression and an integral part of identity making. Our panelists and our participants together will engage in exploring, defining and theorizing diverse research spaces of mediating connections through materiality. The panel is a discursive arena where participants embedded in different communities engage in material practices. In this session the panelists and participants will walk through the process of mediating connections through materiality in real time. The session is intended to be about the process—the means to an end, not an end in itself: shifting boundaries, identifying connections, moving margins and creating a participatory practice that embodies the very connections we hope to enact. Together we are moving from {apart from} to {a part of} – thus our practice reflects what we have experienced in our respective projects, facilitating in a material way the practice of boundary-spanning. This interactive session essentially speaks to all aspects of the conference theme of Connecting Collections, Cultures, and Communities.

Language, listening and learning: critically reflective accountability for INGOs

This article examines the emergence of two waves of reforms across the international non-government organization (INGO) sector in accountability discourse and practice. The first wave accountability model was narrowly framed around the demands of powerful stakeholders such as donors and governments, whereas the second wave was a more holistic approach that prioritized the obligations of INGOs towards their ‘beneficiaries’. It is argued that INGOs should embed critically reflective accountability by pursuing further reforms in three thematic areas. First, words such as ‘beneficiary’ should be expunged from the language of accountability, since it is encoded with norms that implicitly undermine the rights of people and communities to expect that INGOs should be answerable for their actions. Second, listening to marginalized stakeholders should be facilitated by inclusive discursive arenas that enable and empower people ‘to speak and be heard’. Lastly, INGOs need to use feedback to become a learning organization, and collaborate with peers to engender a culture of reflective learning across the sector. Points for practitioners The article offers several policy recommendations structured around three core themes. These include suggestions for the training of field staff, issues concerning the design of participatory exercises, and proposals for a strengthened regime of peer-regulation.

Regendering space and reconstructing identity: Bedouin women's translocal mobility into Israeli-Jewish institutions of higher education

This article offers a geographic perspective on the mutually constitutive relations between institutions of higher education and Bedouin women's gendered spaces, identities and roles. Situated beyond Bedouin women's permitted space and embedded in Israeli-Jewish space, institutions of higher education are sites of displacement that present Bedouin women students with new normative structures, social interactions and opportunities for academic learning. As such, they become a discursive arena for the articulation and reconstruction of their previously held conceptions and identities. Often the journey to institutions of higher education signifies for Bedouin women the first opportunity to venture out of their community. Traveling to the university as students, returning home as educated women and embarking on professional careers outside tribal neighborhoods and villages involves moving across and beyond different locales. Such translocal mobility necessitates constant negotiation between seemingly contradictory cultural constructs and the development of varied spatial bridging strategies. The article seeks to contribute to Bedouin gender studies by going beyond the functional role of higher education institutions as well as the gendered hierarchies of women's mobility, placing emphasis, instead, on the effects of socio-spatial contextuality that shapes Bedouin women's experiences.

Studying circular questioning "in situ": discourse analysis of a first systemic family therapy session.

The present article focuses on the study of circular questioning "in situ," that is, in the context of the discursive arena of an actual first systemic family therapy session. Two typical circular questions are selected, and discourse analysis heavily drawing from the discursive action model is deployed with the aim to highlight their function in the context of therapist and family members' problem talk. The analysis demonstrates the gradual building of two respective patterns, which both exhibit signs of shifts toward the instillment of a systemic epistemology in relation to problem talk: a shift from homogeneity to heterogeneity in family members' voices, which legitimizes the existence of different viewpoints within a system, and a shift from the construction of an accusation toward its deconstruction, which challenges the linear perception of causality underlying the accusation, thus introducing a more circular perspective. Implications are discussed in relation to contemporary, constructionist systemic family therapy practice, and reference is made to the methodological "promises" and challenges of the deployment of discourse analysis for the scrutiny of systemic family therapy therapeutic techniques and tools under a discursively informed light.

Veterans’ Rights in the Russian Constitutional Court, 1993–2010

Since the Russian Constitution was adopted in 1993, many citizens have submitted complaints of perceived violations of their constitutional rights to the Russian Constitutional Court. The study analyzes final Court decisions on fifty-five complaints initiated by Russian veterans. Many of these cases related to veterans’ access to social welfare benefits; the Court rejected most of the cases. Generally speaking, while veterans argued that they were entitled to particular rights as veterans, the Court denied that veterans deserved special rights that were above and beyond the rights of the individual citizen. However, the Court acknowledged the special status of World War II veterans, on the basis of their extraordinary sacrifices. The decisions show a gap between the veterans’ perceptions of their rights and the interpretation of those rights. They also demonstrate that although the Court is formally a body for seeking judicial remedies, it is also a discursive arena in the debate over the Russian state’s interpretation of the Soviet past.

Girls who love boys' love: Japanese homoerotic manga as trans-national Taiwan culture

Based on interviews with 30 female readers of BL (‘boys’ love') manga conducted in Taipei in 2005, this paper analyses the BL scene in Taiwan from the perspective of its social utility as a discursive arena enabling women collectively to think through transforming social ideologies around gender and sexuality. This form of participatory pop culture is most interesting, I argue, not because of any unilateral subversiveness vis-à-vis culturally dominant understandings of (feminine) gender or (homo)sexuality—although it does often contest such dominant understandings. Rather, it is important in providing a space for the collective articulation of young women's in-process thinking on these questions. The paper also engages with the Japaneseness of the genre as consumed in Taiwan in order to consider the imaginative function that its perceived cultural ‘otherness’ performs.

The Cultural Construction of Migrant Women in the Italian Press

This contribution focuses on the migrant women’s portraits that emerge in the Italian press. This discursive arena is dealt with by paying attention to what is taken for granted in the discourses about migrant women and their reproductive rights and behaviours. The analysis is based on a dataset of 634 newspapers articles, published between June 2005 and July 2012, and include both partisan, non-partisan, and religious press. It highlights the culturalization of migrant women, mainly portrayed as victims, and points to the high risk of xenophobic manipulation and political instrumentalization of migrant women’s rights

The missing link: the sexualisation of culture and men

Whilst debate around the sexualisation of culture proliferates across discursive arenas, the potential meanings and impacts for the lives of women, girls and young people dominates discussion. Meanwhile, consideration of men and masculinities remains scarce or only thinly sketched across the field. This viewpoint explores sexualisation as a problematic cultural context for gender equality and ending violence against women and girls, and raises a series of questions for related research agendas. It offers a reflection on what can be gained by turning the gaze away from young people, women and girls onto men and masculinities and exploring sexualisation in the broader context of gender relations and cultural production.

The cultural economy of cleantech: environmental discourse and the emergence of a new technology sector

The paper analyses the discursive definition of the cleantech sector over the period 2000–10. It develops a dialogue between a cultural economy approach to sectoral development and recent research on the role of discourse in defining discursive arenas of environmental concern. The cleantech sector’s rapid emergence in less than a decade can be seen as an example of the development of the cultural economy of an economic sector, defined in part through discursive logics and strategies performed by networks of actors constituted by firms, executives and policy professionals as well as non‐governmental organisations and industry bodies. The paper conceptualises cleantech as a socio‐technical sector that has developed through mechanisms that have established a dynamic sectoral identity as well as legitimacy around the way in which cleantech has been defined by networks of actors. The process of sectoral definition has, in turn, been based on the establishment of discursive logics that justify and make sense of the cleantech sector for investor firms and governments alike. Three discursive strands are thus identified and examined in the paper: the depiction of cleantech as the next paradigmatic technology revolution, the concept of cleantech as market‐driven and the idea of cleantech as a ‘technical fix’ or solution to climate crisis.

(De)Constructing the Praxis of Memory-Keeping: Late Nineteenth-Century Autograph Albums as Sites of Rhetorical Invention

Deconstructing the praxis involved in the collecting of discourse in late nineteenth-century American autograph albums, this essay links the socially based practices involved in middle-class young women's (re)inscription of messages of friendship within such spaces to Jacques Derrida's theory of différance. While the commonplace language contained within such objects often has a conservative orientation, its circulation within communities through customary practices of exchange opened up opportunities for rhetorical invention. The opportunity to write in these locations also represented access to new discursive arenas, participation which likely played a part in women's gradually increasing access to the public sphere.

Engaging with cross‐cultural communication barriers in globalized higher education: the case of research‐degree students

Problematic aspects of intercultural communication are considered in the context of: an increasingly internationalized market for higher education; the globalization of knowledge; the compatibility of distinct national higher education cultures; and the capacity for successful cross‐cultural cooperation. This is exemplified by reference to a doctoral programme delivered by a UK‐based university, largely through distance learning, to students resident in a non‐anglophone country. Here, the challenges have concerned: cultural and linguistic barriers; the use of distance‐based supervision; and taken‐for‐granted knowledge related to learning and academic levels. Anecdotal evidence suggests diverse student experiences during the supervision process, in both face‐to‐face and distance learning contexts, reflecting the extent of familiarity with idiomatic and technical English, and the importance of non‐verbal communication. Given unequal power relations between students and university teachers, improved intercultural communicative competence may be achieved through a mutual construction of a discursive arena reflecting the dynamics of an increasingly globalized structure of academic intercourse. This may involve a critique of assumptions associated with ‘national’ academic cultures together with a pragmatic quest for a common lexicon. This in turn may contribute to the process of cross‐national collaboration and cooperation in higher education.

Bio-Hegemony: The Political Economy of Agricultural Biotechnology in Argentina

AbstractThis paper examines relations between the state and capital in Argentina with respect to agricultural biotechnology. Argentina is one of the world's leading exporters of genetically modified (GM) crops and is a key player in the global politics of biotechnology. Whereas in other parts of the world, including other countries in Latin America, active civil societies and some governments have rejected the technology, Argentina has adopted it as a central accumulation strategy. The desirability of this strategy has been secured in material, institutional and discursive arenas of power, producing a particular expression of ‘bio-hegemony’. Looking at the role of business in the political economy of agricultural biotechnology is revealing both of the extent and forms of corporate power and contributes to an understanding of hegemony in practice.