Discursive Framework Research Articles

Populism and contingency

Abstract Populism has been examined in depth in the last decades both from theoretical and empirical approaches. Among the topics that scholars have studied, the ideological flexibility of populist discourses is one of the most controversial and difficult to analyse. Although a large body of research has explored this peculiar characteristic of populist political discourses, this paper provides an original interpretation of populism by assessing this flexibility drawing on the importance of George Sorel’s theory in discourse theory, which could contribute to a better understanding of populist theory. Understanding populism from a discursive framework could explain the intrinsic contingency of populism and the emergence of both radical right and radical left populisms. This study aims to trace the theoretical path from the influence of Sorel’s Theory of Myth on populist discourse theory to its current implications for populist discourses, resulting in the multifaceted nature of populism.

Revisiting “An Ever Closer Union of Law and Values”. Still Paddling Together?

The ambition of this analysis is to move beyond the dominant perspective of human rights and instead embrace the neglected dimension of the axiology of the supranational integration. The technical question “how” supranational governance must today respond to the changing context of the law of integration and go hand in hand with revisiting the “why”, despite all our differences, we are still ready to live together within the supranational community. Such a shift in the emphasis is necessary given the fact that the law of integration read only through the prism of market has proven ineffective when it comes to counteracting new kinds of legalistic dangers that feed off „the politics of fear”, where the law is used not to empower but to disempower, not to liberate but to oppress, not to bring to the surface, but to hide and manipulate. In these circumstances one of the major scientific and political tasks is thus to improve the understanding of the novel threats on the individual, social and political levels and in this way to develop counter strategies and counter narratives. In other words, supranational governance needs a new conceptual justification that would explain the ethnography and the practice of supranational law of integration when faced with the novel forms of contestation. It is argued that the value discourse associated with supranational legality provides a truly paradigmatic turn in the studies on the supranational governance and design. In this spirit the analysis invites attention and more robust research to the neglected first order questions of belonging and identity in a common legal order where all the actors are being challenged to rethink their allegiances and anchor them firmly within the framework of common values and aspirations. For that to happen, though, a new narrative is needed, one that would provide all the actors of the law of integration with the discursive framework and a point of reference to defend and better explicate transnational democracy and the rule of law, and not just human rights, as the constitutional essentials (“First Principles”) of the supranational legal order.

LA CYBER-CULTURE: L’IDENTITÉ À TRAVERS LES ÉCRANS BLEUS, ANALYSE DES DISCOURS PROVERBIAUX SUR INSTAGRAM

In the speed of light, digital has invaded our lives, and social networks have become an essential tool of expression and exchange for the majority of citizens of the world, the author Moulessehoul Mouhamed who has always been on the lookout of modernity and new technologies is hardly an exception. This research focuses on the contentious form of discourse in digital spaces. It is more precisely a multidisciplinary analysis: identity, polyphonic and argumentative of this kind of discourse according to the Scandinavian vision of polyphony as well as argumentative theory. Sententious statements serve as support for a personal opinion: to invoke a proverb, a saying or a Koranic verse in one’s speech is to legitimize one’s remarks by opting for other voices which are authoritative on the interlocutor, on the one hand , and to place the latter in a precise discursive framework which conditions its interpretation of the discourse on the other hand. Therefore, the main objective of this article is to emphasize the socio-cultural aspect which remains omnipresent on blue screens by manifesting itself in many representations, despite the rise and development of discourses and ways of expression in the digital age.

"A constant battle against sedentary lifestyle and screen time": Swedish school nurses' views on school children's physical activity and its promotion - a grounded theory study.

School nurses are in a key position to promote children's physical activity. They engage all children in health dialogues and use different approaches to inform children about physical activity and motivate them to change their physical activity level. In a school context, it is important to explore and problematize school nurses' views of children's physical activity and the influence of these views on their professional practice in the school health service. Identifying and problematizing school nurses' views of physical activity would enable them to create improved guidelines and equivalent ways of working in the future. Therefore, this study aims to discursively explore Swedish school nurses' views on school children's physical activity and its promotion and elucidate them through a discursive framework based on sensitizing concepts. This study uses a qualitative research design with a constructivist grounded theory approach. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 24 school nurses. The analysis resulted in a core category describing how school nurses use intertwined views to lead children from sedentarity to physical activity. Furthermore, the school nurses' practices were identified in three categories: fostering everyday movement as a tool for health, battling children's sedentarity under difficult conditions, and promoting everyday movement and compensating for unequal access. The results indicate that school nurses lack common and clear guidelines for their mission to promote physical activity to children, which may lead to inequality in access to physical activity for children and young people.

China’s Ukraine Policy: Unchanged Rhetoric Despite Changing Conjuncture

This article discusses China’s approach to the Ukraine crisis and the factors that shape China’s attitude to this situation in the comparative timelines of the 2014 and 2022 crises. Despite the changes in China’s security perceptions and the balance of power in the international system, China’s rhetoric about the ongoing Ukraine crisis has vague rhetoric similar to the crisis in 2014. While China regards the 2014 Ukraine crisis as a regional crisis, it sees the recent situation as a crisis with global effects. China’s approach to the Ukraine crisis, which is on its way to becoming a global power, is shaped within the framework of multiple contradictory parameters. First, at the discursive level, the ‘five principles of peaceful coexistence’ have formed the discursive framework of Chinese foreign policy since the 1950s. Second, the rapidly developing China–Russia relations after the Cold War, and third, the increasing threat China perceives from the United States, which it sees as a global hegemonic power, and in this context, its global policies. As a result, it is possible to define China’s approach to the Ukraine crisis as passively pro-Russian.

The anthropocentrism thesis: (mis)interpreting environmental values in small-scale societies

In both radical and mainstream environmental discourses, anthropocentrism (human centredness) is inextricably linked to modern industrial society's drive to control and dominate nature and the generation of our current environmental crisis. Such environmental discourses frequently argue for a retreat from anthropocentrism and the establishment of a harmonious relationship with nature, often invoking the supposed ecological harmony of indigenous peoples and/or other small-scale societies. In particular, the beliefs and values of these societies vis-à-vis their natural environment are taken to be instrumental in their low environmental impact. Here it is argued that, aside from the empirically problematic nature of such claims, the beliefs of small-scale societies have been seen through an ethnocentric discursive framework which bifurcates belief systems into anthropocentric and ecocentric. Taking a meta-theoretical approach informed by Strong Structuration Theory, it is argued that the beliefs of small-scale societies about their relationship with nature should be recognised as lying on a continuum of anthropocentrism and understood in the context of their attempts to establish ‘environmental ontological security’ in the face of natural uncertainty.

Visionary or Voyeur: Lionel Wendt and the Contradictions of Late Colonial Modernity in Ceylon

The voyeuristic qualities that permeate the vast oeuvre of Ceylonese photographer Lionel Wendt (1900-1944) are a point of contention within scholarship on his work. Scholars counter claims of voyeurism by underscoring his national belonging to Ceylon, his anti-colonial politics, or the global modernist influences on his aesthetic. Many of these analyses rely on Wendt’s biography to contextualize the formal qualities of his photographs. While his biography is important for establishing his influences and motivations as a photographer, it can overshadow the insight offered by the images themselves. This paper draws on a selection of Wendt’s photographs to chart a dialogue between their formal qualities and the political and cultural context of their production, such as a modernist visual arts movement in Ceylon, and a changing political economy as the island approached independence from colonial rule. I argue for a more robust definition of Ceylon modernism that accounts for its relationship to the social modernity during the late colonial era. I then recalibrate the question of voyeurism through an examination of the most common recipient of Wendt’s gaze: the laborer. I pair a formal reading of Wendt’s photo series Men at Work with a discussion of Ceylon’s labor movement, including its contested and antagonistic relationship to the growing nationalist politics of the period. Through my analysis, I foreground the contradictions so characteristic of late colonial modernity in Ceylon, as well as the limitations of binary anti/post-colonial discursive frameworks in which Wendt has been understood.

Preservation and reproduction of cultural and historical memory in the complex of journalism functions

Addressing the phenomenon of cultural and historical memory in the context of journalism theory and professional practice is important for a number of reasons. In a theoretical sense, it is necessary to take into account the structural features of the phenomenon of cultural and historical memory and the dynamics of its development, changes and influence on the processes taking place in journalism under the influence of the formation of a new system of post-global world order. The question of the essential institutional features of journalism in the spaces of sovereign macroregions can be solved only in the search for supporting specific basic principles of the existence of the profession. One of these principles should be cultural and historical memory, which has a national origin and institutional and cultural forms of expression, to which, among others (no less, but no more important), journalism should be attributed. The methodology of system analysis is used as a fundamental principle in the work. In determining the functional structure, the approaches developed within the framework of structural and functional analysis are used. In determining the interdependence of the structure of a historical fact in journalism and the spaces of its realization, discourse analysis is used in its functional application in the form of a discursive framework. The inclusion of the issues of cultural and historical memory in the processes of professional journalistic education requires the approval of the principle of subjectivity of journalism, its institutional nature, which allows initiation and full participation in social changes. The preservation and reproduction of cultural and historical memory is present as an integral part of the complex of professional journalistic functions.The functional complex of journalism manifests itself at the strategic level as participation in the expansion of cultural space and self-determination as an active part of cultural national history. At the operational and tactical level, journalism performs the functions of socio-cultural integration, socialization and adaptation. The structural components of a historical fact in journalism (denotation, meaning and concepts) are revealed to varying degrees depending on the implementation spaces. The methodology of the spatial approach used in the study of journalism allows us to identify the natural, material, social, personal and mediated media levels of space. Denotation plays a dominant role on the natural, material and social levels, meaning plays a dominant role on the personal level, meaning plays a dominant role on the media space level, and concepts play a dominant role in audience feedback systems.

Hip hop entrepreneurship: the poetics of the Hip Hop Mogul

ABSTRACT Scholars of entrepreneurship, business, and economics have been reluctant to consider Hip Hop as a viable means for research and theory-building. Oddly enough, through the 1970s – a period that was generally characterized by stagnation and high unemployment – Hip Hop captivated audiences around the globe, creating innovative and diverse market opportunities for a host of different communities. The term ‘Hip Hop Mogul’ emerged to describe artists whose commercial viability appealed to varied sensibilities and disparate public spheres. Who are these Hip Hop Moguls? What are the interests of these Hip Hop Moguls? Drawing on lyrical content from a sample of Hip Hop Moguls (n = 15), we examine the discursive frameworks that make-up Moguldom, its politics, and its ways of being. Ultimately, our findings shed light on the different ways that marginalized communities negotiate antagonistic economic relations and disrupt traditional business paradigms.

Civil Rights and Prophetic Indictment: A Discursive History of Jesuit Superior General Pedro Arrupe’s On the Interracial Apostolate

In 1967, the superior general of the Society of Jesus, Pedro Arrupe, sent a memorandum on the American “racial crisis” to the Jesuit priests, brothers, and social institutions of the United States. Through appeals to the American legal and Catholic moral traditions, On the Interracial Apostolate articulated why Jesuits should strive to achieve racial equality, initiating a historic period of expansion in Jesuit civil rights programs. Given scholars’ limited engagement with On the Interracial Apostolate’s distinctive rhetorical features, this article explains why the document was framed within the discursive framework of prophetic indictment by uncovering the influence of William J. Kenealy, a Jesuit legal scholar, on the document’s drafting. In light of this drafting history, this article concludes by suggesting that the emergence of twentieth-century “Jesuit anti-racism” can, in part, be explained by how questions about racial equality came to be understood as discrete expressions of broader debates about the American legal tradition’s moral foundations.

World Literature: An Indian Way of Thinking

The idea of the world is a dynamic phenomenon, and the development of world literature is tied to both literary and extra-literary events. Worldwide literary centers can be found in many locations spanning both time and space. The concept of the world, or Visva (Sanskrit), is considerably older even if world literature has been a discursive framework that has affected the literary structures of many languages around the world since the 19th century. “Vasudhaiba Kutumbakam,” or the universal neighborhood, is a term from ancient Indian literature that attests to the age of the concept of Vasudha, or the world. As a result of numerous trade routes, cultural interactions, the expansion of ancient and medieval kingdoms, and the transit of literary writings, cosmopolitan literary spaces were created in various parts of t8he world. Additionally, the absence of modern cartography and the sovereign state system enabled constant changes in the borders of the empires, resulting in spaces with many languages. India has connections to several Asian nations dating back to ancient times, as well as to Europe since the medieval period. The diverse traditions of human thought from various parts of the world are carried in Indian literature. Significant literary contacts and the ongoing formation of new literary legacies were witnessed in the East, Middle East, South East, and South Asia of the present. The Sufi and Bhakti traditions, the reception of Indian epics as oral, written, and performative texts in South-East Asia, and the role of the royal courts as multilingual literary spaces continue to broaden the intellectual traditions of Bharat (India). Thus, the pre-modern development of world literature seemed intriguing and a subject worth exploring for literary professionals. This essay contends that ancient and medieval India and Bengal, particularly their languages, continually bargained to expand their intellectual frontiers.

Between the divine and digital: Parsing Modi’s charismatic avatar

This article explores the production of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s saintly charismatic avatar and the mediations of this avatar that seek to bestow him with exceptional authority. It shows how Modi’s avatar is being incarnated along three intersecting axes. The first axis comprises the broader historical, cultural and religious discursive frameworks that construct Modi as an incarnate charismatic leader. It focuses on his strategic invocation of Mahatma Gandhi through political and persona branding. Next, it unveils how Modi’s charismatic avatar is shaped through embodied performances and the management of bodily optics. Finally, it analyzes the platforming of Modi’s charismatic avatar, which takes place through organized public relations machinery operating in digital realms. Together, these mediations work to advance a Moditva-oriented populist politics that promotes ideological salvation for the nation via a leader whose persona and authority are conceptualized in divine terms undermining the pluralist and inclusive tenets of the Hindu religion.

‘Hybrid war’, military humanitarianism, and epistemic friction. Framing illegalised migration on the Polish-Belarusian border

ABSTRACT This article aims to contribute to the understanding of the phenomenon of the ‘humanitarian border’ in its specific local context of Polish nationalism and the use of patriotic sentiments to justify violence at the border. The intensification of asylum-seeker migration from Asia and Africa on the EU's eastern border, triggered by the Lukashenka regime since the summer of 2021, was quickly dubbed as ‘hybrid war’, enabling the Polish government to take decisive military action against border crossers. The justification for this violence became both the patriotic duty, expressed in national idioms, and the discursively produced humanitarian concern for refugees whose lives and health were threatened precisely by the harshness of border controls. The labelling of repression and violence as the heroism and care of the Polish uniformed services, present both in the discursive framework of the description of the ‘crisis’ by the government media and in the cooperation of border guards with humanitarian actors, has become a specific form of ‘epistemic borderwork’. The grassroots solidarity movement that opposes these hegemonic discourses seeks to create counter-narratives highlighting the state's illegal actions and the refugees’ right to freedom of movement.

External ideas or traditional values? A reappraisal of Japanese ‘neoliberal’ reforms

In Japan, the so-called neoliberal-inspired transition generally refers to an ideological agenda. However, one should distinguish between neoliberal reforms carried out in accordance with a political agenda and the genuine local evolution of ideas based on the influence of foreign thinkers. By leveraging key notions such as ‘individual responsibility’ (jiko sekinin), ‘self-help’ (jijo), ‘mutual aid’ (kyōjo) and ‘public aid’ (kōjo), this paper accounts for older roots of Japanese-style neoliberalism. It highlights how, throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, predating current liberal norms, certain notions preceded contemporary liberal ideas and served as a discursive framework, while others became intertwined with ‘foreign’ ideas as they permeated the political discourse. It illuminates how shorter-term politics characterized by conflicts of interest and political strategies fit within longer-term political notions and their ideological evolution.

Too Little, Too Late: the Catalan Debacle in Light of the Slovenian Attainment of Independence

The failed Catalan sovereignty process, launched in 2012 and then crushed by the intervention of the Spanish central government in 2017, relied to a certain extent on a discursive framework based on the evocation of previous secessionist experiences in Europe. Among these, the case of Slovenia (successfully completed in 1992) stood out. A close examination of these cases outlines the limitations of these analogies, notably through their differences in terms of political and social articulation and, in particular, the diverging success of external engagement. Beyond political and social articulation and the degree of economic development (heterogeneous aspects in many successful statehood processes), the comparison of these cases demonstrates that a sound internationalization strategy is essential for statehood attainment. The success of such a strategy does not solely depend on the secessionist actors’ ability to reach out to the relevant international players, but also on the latter’s readiness to provide necessary support. While the Slovenes managed to promptly engage with the rapid geopolitical changes in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, the Catalan bid for secession found receptiveness only among marginal actors within major powers, all together unwilling to push for border changes of a state located in a sensitive area of the Euro-Atlantic security complex.

Narrative Focus in 300


 
 
 The novel 300, by Rafael Cuevas Molina, is analyzed here. Considering testimoniality as a discursive modality in Central American literature, we describe its relationship with the discursive framework of narrative texts that establish the relations between the traumatic processes of guerrilla and insurgency with the forms of construction of memories and disenchantments, including the problems of conceptualization, writing and narrative focalization as resources of textual semiosis. The latter is a strategy that presents a typology of polyphonic voices to elucidate the representation of violence in this novel, as one of the aesthetic-discursive specificities of the text.
 
 

'Through a kaleidoscope': A Foucauldian discourse analysis of Belgian policy regarding patients with a migration background and depression in general practices.

A higher prevalence of depression is found among patients with a migration background within the Belgian population. Nevertheless, this group is underrepresented in ambulant and residential mental health care services. Since general practitioners (GPs) have a crucial gatekeeping role, this led some researchers to investigate the possibility of a provider bias influencing GPs' assessment and referral of depressed patients with a migration background. However, GPs' accounts may be influenced by wider professional discourses present at the policy level, which are inevitably linked to institutions regulating the conduct of GPs. Therefore, this study applied a Foucauldian discourse analysis (a) to identify broader professional discourses in Belgian policy documents regarding patients with a migration background and depression in general practices, (b) to examine how patients with a migration background are discursively positioned and (c) to investigate which different balances of power in the relationship between GPs and patients with a migration background are demonstrated in the identified discourses. We identified three recurring discourses: (a) the othering discourse, (b) the health literacy discourse, and (c) the person-centred discourse. Our analysis demonstrated that the former two discourses illustrate the perpetuation of a biomedical discourse. While the last discourse is aligned with a counter-discourse associated with the person-centred care model in health care. Consequently, our analysis demonstrated the construction of a contradictory discursive framework throughout the various policy documents on which GPs might rely when speaking about patients with a migration background suffering from depression.

BETWEEN THE SPACE OF THE IMAGINARY AND THE SPHERE OF IDEAS: ONTOLOGICAL MODEL OF PROCLUS AND IRANIAN NEOPLATONIC TRADITION OF SUHRAWARDĪ

The article is devoted to the study of the influence of Neoplatonic concepts, in particular, the philosophy of Proclus on the discursive space of Iranian Neoplatonism. Proclus' system, Neoplatonic dialectic, turned out to be meaningful for the school of Yahya as-Suhrawardī. Exploring the “Primordial philosophy,” Suhrawardy attempted to build an ontological concept based on the Neoplatonic system. In this case, Proclus's dialectic helped him to reconcile Islamic orthodoxy and Shia concepts of ghulat. The reception of Platonism within the framework of the Illuminativist school had a tremendous influence on the development of Iranian philosophical thought in subsequent periods. It set the discursive framework for Iranian philosophical schools during the Safavid Renaissance of the 16th-17th centuries; Neoplatonism turned out to be the main language of philosophical reflection in the Iranian (more broadly, Shiite) intellectual sphere throughout the High Middle Ages and the New Age. In addition, the influence of Suhrawardi and his followers is also evident in the intellectual tradition of the Ottoman Empire, but the Illuminati traditions of the Sublime Porte require further detailed study. Thus, the strict hierarchy of the ontological and epistemological system confirmed the complex religious and historical constructions of Shiite imamology. The chains of revelation of the vilayat were considered in the context of Neoplatonic emanation, and one of the forms of legitimation of the prophetic revelation of the imams was an appeal to the accidental light, the border space between the world of ideas and the world of matter. In addition, it was the complex, multi-level system of Proclus and Damascus that offered not only a vertical orientation from the Highest Principle to the lower forms of matter, but also numerous horizontal levels parallel to each other, in which each of the hypostases of the One is divided into a number of self-completed participatory hypostases emanating from their uninvolved monadic cause. Maintaining this structure, Suhrawardī speaks of a multiplicity of self-completed revelations emanating from the single source of all prophecies, the reality of alam al-mihtal.

From small to big data: (mis)uses of insurance premium for the government of hazards

ABSTRACT If insurance is a technology for governing hazards, the tools for doing so have changed over time and seem to concentrate, in the second half of the twentieth century, on the notion of risk-based premiums. The narrative in the insurance literature is that by adjusting the premium to the risk, the insurer is sending a signal to the policyholder about his risk, therefore encouraging prevention. The purpose of this article is to contextualize this precept, by highlighting that the notion of premium as a risk signal was born within the narrow discursive framework of rational choice theory, thus building heavily on the perception of the insured as homo oeconomicus. More recent findings in behavioral economics, which question the rationality of agents, should have rendered this narrative obsolete. However, the still in the making behavioral insurance presents a combination of these theoretical insights, with the computation of individualized risk scores thanks to big data, supposedly embodying the ultimate risk-based premium. Two pilot products, taken as exemplars of behavioral insurance, exemplify this shift, and elucidate the contradiction: in practice premiums are now impacted by reward systems in large part disconnected from scores, thereby displacing the government of uncertainty.

Att lära av ”den Andra”?

Learning from “The Other”? Transformative learning in Swedish high school students’ narratives from an educational trip to Kenya. The study explores transformative learning in a group of Swedish high school students’ shared narratives about an educational trip to Kenya. The understanding of transformative learning is inspired by a discourse analytical approach, which emphasizes the use of discursive frameworks and repertoires for making sense of experiences. The analysis shows that the participants express a desire to learn from ‘the Other’, which is associated with a critical examination of their own ways of thinking. Moreover, the image of ‘the other’ is complex. On the one hand, it is constructed as a generalized image of the exotic other and reproduces notions of ‘the noble savage’. On the other hand, the image of ‘the other’ is also framed by a liberal discourse of individualism and tolerance. Finally, the narratives also entail constructions of similarity, which indicates a more radical renegotiation of previous discursive frames and blurs the borders between us and them.