Discursive Closure Research Articles

Natural Resource Management in the U.S. Arctic: Sustainable Organizing Through Communicative Practices

This study advances a theoretical framework of sustainable organizing, grounded in the communicative practices of key organizational actors. I situate this study in the enactment of natural resource management (NRM) in the U.S. Arctic, drawing on qualitative fieldwork and in-depth interviews. The theoretical framework hinges on four iterative sensitizing concepts—stakeholder embeddedness in local–global ecologies, constitutive role of d/Discourse, rhetoric–practice tensions, and systemic risk–resilience—that guided data analysis. Findings revealed that participants communicatively constituted NRM in terms of structural challenges and best practices. NRM’s structural challenges were rooted in discursive closure of key perspectives through past events, routinization, and design; othering of important stakeholders; and framing institutional tension as conflict. Nevertheless, participants emphasized key decision-making, relationship-building, and risk-managing clusters that enabled NRM best practices benefiting both human and natural stakeholders. The empirical study thus extends the proposed theoretical framework by demonstrating context-specific practices that enact sustainable organizing.

Traces of a Revolution

Traces of a Revolution

Change managerialism and micro-processes of sensemaking during change implementation

In this article we critically analyze micro-processes of sensemaking during change implementation under a macro-level discourse of top-down planned change management, which we coin ‘change managerialism’. We demonstrate how taken-for-granted enactments of managing change interweave with organizational change discourses and how this subsequently inhibits sensemaking micro-processes. Adopting a reflexive research methodology, this article contributes to the sensemaking of change literature by illustrating how change managerialism infiltrates an organization’s managerial change discourse and sensemaking micro-processes, causing a disruption in sensemaking. Empirical material of a case study conducted at a professional services firm suggests these dynamics unintentionally inhibit sensemaking micro-processes and bracket off direct experience of the organization’s change recipients through lifeworld colonization, detachment, discursive closure and constrained reflexivity.

A paedophile scan to prevent child sexual abuse in child care? A thought experiment to problematize the notion of alignment in Responsible Research and Innovation

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is a science policy concept that gained traction from 2000 onwards in the EU and US, in which alignment on purposes and values between different stakeholders is a key aspect. This thought experiment problematizes this particular notion: ethically acceptable and societally desirable outcomes are not necessarily achieved when alignment is a consequence of early closure. To argue this point, we took the example of the potential development of scanning technology for the detection of paedophilia among job applicants, for which indicators of broad societal support were found in an RRI project on neuroimaging. We analysed this case by looking through several lenses, obtained by structured and non-structured literature searches. We explored how facts and values are masked when a taboo topic is considered. This results in the black boxing of the problem definition, potential solutions and development trajectories. Complex unstructured problems can thus be perceived as manageable structured problems, which can in turn lead to irresponsible policies surrounding technology development. Responsible processes of research and technology development thus require the involvement of a critical reflector who is alert to signs of early closure and who prevents foreclosure of ongoing reflexive deliberation. There is an important role for ethical, legal and societal aspect studies within the framework of RRI. This paper shows that the concepts of “value/fact diversity masking” and “early discursive closure” are new avenues for RRI research.

‘The triumph of the American nation’

This essay offers a series of reflections on the traumatic impact of the threat of nuclear war during the SDI years of the mid-1980s. It also explores the discursive closure produced by the hegemonic consolidation of American history narratives and the ruptures that allow for moments of intellectual resistance.

Risk governance through professional expertise. Forestry consultants’ handling of uncertainties after a storm disaster

How do forestry consultants provide advice when facing a situation of great uncertainty? This question serves as the point of departure in analyzing how forestry consultants provide guidance in extreme situations. Three empirical cases are analyzed, all related to a storm that caused the most severe damage in Swedish history. The first case concerns how forestry consultants handled the immediate uncertainties in their advice on how to manage the windthrow. The second case concerns how they handled the risks associated with the large-scale timber depots that resulted from the decision to transport all windthrown trees away from the forest. The third case concerns how forestry consultants handled uncertainties regarding the reforestation of the area. Whereas there was discursive closure in the two first cases, and the forest owners followed the recommendations made by the forestry consultants, there was no discursive closure in the third case, resulting in the forest owners deciding against the advice provided by the consultants. In conclusion, this result is explained with reference to the epistemic authority and embodied knowledge of the forestry consultants.

Adaptive management? Observations of knowledge coordination in the communication practice of Swedish game management

Modern management of natural resources is guided by the normative theory of adaptive management (AM). Behind this theory lies a strong, albeit implicit, expectation that organisations aiming for AM have the capacity to communicate in a way that facilitates the required coordination of the knowledge perspectives involved. The aim of this article is to discuss the extent to which the communication practice of Swedish game management organisations facilitates coordination of knowledge corresponding to AM. Based on operationalizations of communicative rationality and agonistic pluralism, we use the concepts ‘discursive closure’ and ‘discursive opening’ to investigate how the coordination of knowledge is carried out through communication in relatively recently established organisations, the Swedish Game Management Delegations (GMDs). We analyse four communication episodes from GMD meetings and notice that multiple perspectives were expressed (discourse openings) but were not evaluated in a communicative rational way before being closed. The consequences of these closures were that knowledge perspectives with potential relevance, but with unclear validity for game management, were not elaborated upon, in terms of their truth, intelligibility, legitimacy or sincerity, which inhibited AM. The concepts of discursive closure and discursive opening proved useful for investigating communicative capacity. An important question which needs to be addressed to improve communicative capacity for AM is whether it would be practically possible to keep to the agenda and rules of the GMD meetings and still admit discursive openings about differences in perspectives.

Discursive Closure and Discursive Openings in Sustainability

Sustainability is an ambiguous and open-ended concept with many different meanings. Researchers as well as practitioners often express frustration with this fact and frequently call for more consistent, measurable, and univocal definitions of sustainability to ensure agreement, mutual understanding, and collective action (Jahdi & Acikdilli, 2009; Kolk, 2003). This essay, by contrast, explores the potential of appreciating and embracing ambiguity in the sustainability arena. We argue that lack of a clear-cut sustainability definition has potential to mobilize stakeholders to challenge existing understandings and explore new ideas and practices. Accepting conceptual ambiguity, in other words, is not necessarily to evade responsibility or critique. Whereas discursive closure may bind the concept to the past and make an organization blind to new and unexpected issues of sustainability problems, an open-ended conceptualization may stimulate sensitivity, quick adaption, and innovative solutions. We refer to this practice as “license to critique.” Instead of presuming to provide final answers to sustainability issues, sustainability program can, as a license to critique, authorize and invite stakeholders to participate, challenge, and debate.

Interruptive discourses: Léopold Senghor, African Emotion and the poetry of politics

This paper suggests that Senghor's political and poetic work can be understood as connected to his position as a sophisticated critical thinker. In order to move past a hasty rejection of his work, one might analyse Senghor's work as part of the more serious anti-colonial, epistemological activism that emerges in the mid-twentieth century. I argue that, for Senghor, politics is an art of interrupting discursive closures. I characterize Senghor's thinking as focused on epistemological questions, a recognition of the embeddedness of these questions in everyday political decision-making, and an awareness of the way his own thinking develops over time. I examine Senghor's On African Socialism in order to unpack the nuances in his approach. In thinking about international politics and the legacy of colonialism, I suggest that Senghor was successful in keeping open discursive closures and that from him we can learn how to prioritize the critical analysis that the development of critical questions entails.

Against epistemic totalitarianism: the insurrectional politics of Bessie Head

This paper argues that South African writer, Bessie Head, crafted art that refuses discursive closure, or epistemic totalitarianism. The essay demonstrates this by examining Head's commitment to analysing power in the context of people's daily lives and her attention to the insurrectionary role of imagination in intervening in established dynamics of power. The first section draws connections between Head's practice of writing about ordinary people to her own experience and observations of living under South African apartheid. The second section focuses on the analytical links that Head makes between poverty, white privilege and institutional economic structures in order to demonstrate how her analysis of the rigidity of the system yielded an attentiveness to the need to be able to imagine other possibilities. The third section depicts Head's insurrectionary writing as part of a moral force that is, in part, a function of her analysis of the problem as an absence of imaginative possibilities. This, I suggest, indicates that – as with much critical African anti-colonial writing – Head's approach presents contemporary social theory with a challenge to epistemic totalitarianism that can be useful for addressing current issues.

Big Ag Gags the Freedom of Expression

In the course of the past three years a wave of bills attempting to restrict freedom of expression has surged in statehouses across the United States. These bills reflect a political strategy within the agriculture industry to stifle public participation in industrial meat production regulation and oversight. This essay analyzes this ag gag legislation as a political strategy using communication theory. Specifically, the analysis compares the language and intent in the first set of ag gag legislation (circa early 1990s) with the most recent set (circa 2011-2013) and argues that the more recent ag gag legislation hinges on repressing the freedom of expression. The analysis finds message framing, pre-empting the public screen, and discursive closure, are utilized to prevent negative publicity and reinforce the boundary between private and public with problematic implications for democratic practices.

CSR and the Mediated Emergence of Strategic Ambiguity

We develop a framework for understanding how lack of clarity in business press coverage of corporate social responsibility functions as a mediated and emergent form of strategic ambiguity. Many stakeholders expect CSR to exhibit clarity, consistency, and discursive closure. But stakeholders also expect CSR to conform to varying degrees of both formal and substantive rationality. These diverse expectations conflict with each other and change over time. A content analysis of press coverage in Denmark suggests that the business media reflect and amplify the ambiguity generated by these shifting demands. We propose that this very public lack of discursive closure provides strategic advantages to CSR stakeholders by rendering the concept of CSR adaptable, resilient, and meaningful to diverse interests. From this perspective, strategic ambiguity emerges from a relational and mediated process, not from the direct intentions of individual stakeholders. Our framework suggests that CSR is best understood not as a clear or consistent agenda, but rather as a forum for sensemaking, diversity of opinion, and debate over the conflicting social norms and expectations attached to corporate activity.

Asylum and the Post-Political: Domopolitics, Depoliticisation and Acts of Citizenship

This paper explores the ways in which practices of asylum governance serve to depoliticise those seeking asylum in the UK. In critiquing claims over the “post-political” nature of contemporary governance, the paper proposes a focus upon situated practices of depoliticisation which displace those seeking asylum through the production of specific sites of accommodation and specific discourses of risk, security and moralised concern. The paper questions the tendency within “post-political” thought to strip the potential of modes of informal citizenship through arguing that minor acts of resistance are ineffectual and illusory. In response, the paper explores irregular migrant's “acts of citizenship”, and suggests that such prosaic acts can be powerful forms of political interruption through which new ways of seeing asylum are constructed. The paper concludes by suggesting that an incremental politics orientated around such acts of interruption is essential to challenge the material, affective and discursive closures of asylum domopolitics.

Was This Just for Show? Discursive Opening and Closure in a Public Participatory Process

A focus on communication can provide in-depth understanding of public participation in natural resource management. Analysis of empirical material from a participatory process using the theoretical concepts of discursive closure and discursive opening revealed that openings were achieved, but the perspectives represented in the process were also closed down. The reasons for closures are discussed in terms of structural constraints, with participants shown to have many different constraints and different reasons for making closures. The conclusion is that the type of theoretical analysis presented in this paper could be used by a facilitator in meetings as a participatory tool to investigate closures and open them up to achieve a more deliberative process.

Bildning till verklighet och icke-representationell

<em><span style="font-family: CronosMM-It_408_10_; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: CronosMM-It_408_10_; font-size: x-small;"><font face="CronosMM-It_408_10_" size="2"><div>This paper explores the educational significance of the critique of representationalism. As it includes the notion of non-representational knowledge, Rudolf Steiner’s epistemology is introduced and further linked to elements in Bergson and Deleuze. Humboldt’s idea of Menschenbildung as the central function of knowledge is brought in, since both Humboldt and Steiner emphasise knowledge as mediating the interplay between self and world, producing a deeper sense of reality. Such an education must respect the living nature of genuine concepts as well as the aesthetic aspects of learning. After a note on the educational abuse of language in discursive closures, some traits of Steiner’s practical pedagogy are presented as possible practical implications.</div></font></span></span></em>

How economic methodology became a separate science

Ever since the formation of the field of economic methodology in the 1990s, doubts have been raised about its discursive closure from both inside and outside the field. Rather than embarking on a programmatic discussion, I present a historical narrative regarding the conditions of the formation of the field, which may have necessitated this closure. These conditions are found in the role methodological reflections played in the formalist revolution of the 1950s and in its critique in the 1970s. Both episodes gave occasion to, but did not require the import of philosophy of science in the mid-1970s. Since the 1980s, when the field became separately established through post-Popperian methodology, it remains an open question whether this imposition still holds.

Owen, Blair and Utopian Socialism: On the Post-Apocalyptic Reformulation of Marx and Engels

This article argues for utopianism, an activity which has all too often been denigrated by socialists. Its starting point is Donnachie and Mooney's article for issue 35(2) of Critique on the connection between Robert Owen and Tony Blair, in which their shared utopianism is viewed as a key element in their class collaborations and flight from the reality of capitalism's voracities. Whilst I do not argue against most of the criticisms made of Owen and Blair, I take issue with the implied anti-utopianism of Donnachie and Mooney's critique, a position they draw on from Marx and Engels. In contrasdistinction I argue that Marx and Engels (in spite of themselves) were great utopians, that utopianism needs to be seen as a broad method of social investigation (being counter-revolutionary as well as revolutionary but ground worth fighting for—not just a flight of fancy), and that socialism is and always has been impoverished by attempts at discursive closure or, as the dystopian Zamyatin would put it, Fantasiectomy (the surgical removal of the imagination). Whereas the utopian imagination has come to be associated with the monographic fantasy of a powerful or charismatic individual, our solution should lie in the democratization of the political imagination, of the imagining of the ‘best of all possible worlds’, rather than in its abandonment. The latter approach merely leaves fallow ground to be occupied by those already with a voice, such as Owenites and Blairites, rather than encouraging the historically silent to speak for the first time, freed from the anti-utopian restraint of ‘well, you can only speak this way, because this is the way it has always been done’.

An analysis of the ideological work of the discourses of ‘fair play’ and moral education in perpetuating inequitable gender practices in PETE

Background: Physical education (PE) is a subject which has a long history of legitimising itself on the grounds of its contribution to pupils' social and moral welfare. It therefore seems probable that PE teacher education (PETE) might embrace recent calls for the need to re-moralise society due to the conditions of the late-modern age and not least the pleas for professional teachers to perceive their role within moral, as opposed to technical terms. It seems pertinent to ask whether PETE culture strives to nurture tomorrow's PE teachers within a philosophy which values inclusive, local learning environments which celebrate and respect the diversity of citizens in a democratic, late-modern society, even though it has traditionally been founded upon scientific functionalism and a positivistic pedagogy. Purpose: The study aimed to explore the extent to which PETE can be seen to nurture equitable learning environments, within a discourse of teacher professionalism which celebrates diversity, by using the lens of gender equity. Research design and data collection: Qualitative data have been generated from individual, in-depth interviews, group interviews and the content analysis of PETE curricula. The sample comprised eight PE teacher educators (two female, six male), 12 student teachers (three female, nine male), and five supervisory teachers (one female, four male) from three institutions of higher education offering PETE in Norway. Participants were asked questions such as ‘what do you see as being the most important knowledge in PETE?’, ‘how would you describe a good, professional PE teacher?’, ‘how do you interpret providing students with equitable learning experiences?’, ‘what type of gender theory informs your PETE practice?’, and ‘what does gender equity mean to you?’ Local policy documents were collected from each institution, including PETE course outlines, overviews of compulsory literature, and PETE evaluation procedures. A critical hermeneutical analysis of the data drawing upon a range of theoretical perspectives and research findings on gender, moral education through the physical, and teacher professionalism, was used to explore the overriding research question. Findings: The analyses revealed that the concept of ‘fair play’, combined with the prevailing gender discourses and dominant views of teacher professionalism in PETE, does considerable ‘ideological work’ to sustain inequitable gender relations. The discourse of ‘fair play’ draws upon actors' common sense understandings of the concept as opposed to theoretical perspectives, as does the hegemonic discourse of gender which is evident in the data. Rather than developing professional identities which celebrate diversity, PETE culture in Norway seems to continue a subject tradition of constructing teachers, student teachers and pupils as universal, disembodied, and de-contextualised subjects. Conclusions: The study alights us to the dangers of imposing ‘discursive closure’ if PETE culture legitimates discourses about gender and morality which limit actors' understandings of the complexities of these phenomena. We advocate a PETE culture that emphasises plurality and acknowledges the inevitable power structures imbued in different ways of knowing.

Fantasy in the discourse of ‘Social Theory of International Politics’

No doubt Wendt’s ‘Social Theory of International Politics’ (STIP) is a discourse. As such, the theory is built on certain discursive conditions of possibility. Drawing on Lacan’s theory of discourse, I analyse these conditions of possibility in arguing that a desire of discursive closure is created in STIP through a fantasy. The latter sustains itself not only by pre-empting its own failure but also by maintaining the desire for discursive closure. I argue that STIP cannot escape deploying such a fantasy. More broadly, what social constructivism based on critical realism does, especially in its thin version, is construct a dichotomy between intransitive and transitive objects in its theoretic discourses. It then endeavours, via constructing fantasies, to use transitive discursive objects to sustain the desire for the constructed dichotomies, which hankers for discursive closure. This means that Wendt is more constructivist than he knows, despite his move of ‘not going all the way down’. In short, I argue that ‘ideas not all the way down’ is a discourse all the way down because of what Wendt and thin constructivists struggle to make of it.

What Do We Ask of Global Citizenship Education? A Study of Global Citizenship Education in a Canadian University

This article presents findings from a study of a Canadian university that has named 'global citizenship' as a key educational goal. Drawing on theories of globalization, deliberative democracy, and deliberative processes including discursive closure, this study examines the multiple demands made of 'global citizenship' in higher education and the subsequent educational projects that are designed to meet this educational goal. The research questioned whether discursive closure was being engaged to limit 'global citizenship' to a modernity project where, as the literature suggested, (neo) liberalism and universalism ultimately served to make the world the un-gated playground of the elite where they might work, play, and consume without national or local political and cultural restrictions. In contrast, we wondered whether these policy openings might also be reflections of shifts in practices toward justice, equity, and inclusion with considerations of the historical and cultural histories and legacies of international relations of colonialism and imperialism. Using deliberative dialogue as a data collection method, the researchers were able to surface educators' multiple understandings of global citizenship as well as possible discursive closure and/or emerging social justice in the courses, projects, and policies of this institution.