Discursive Legitimacy Research Articles

Empathetic Reform and the Psychedelic Aesthetic: Women’s Accounts of LSD Therapy

Both written under pseudonym, Constance Newland’s My Self and I (1962) and Jane Dunlap’s Exploring Inner Space (1961) are firsthand accounts of psychedelic drug use taken in therapeutic research settings that demonstrate how women’s access to discursive legitimacy was negotiated in mid-twentieth-century life-writing. Newland and Dunlap use realism to connect readers to their psychedelic subjects, while estranging readers’ familiar worldviews through metaphor. Through reader recognition and estrangement, Newland and Dunlap develop readers’ empathy as a reformist tool to challenge standard narratives of literature and science and carve out new representational space for alternative states of consciousness.

The Politics of Normative Childhoods and Non-Normative Parenting: A Response to Cristyn Davies and Kerry Robinson

This article offers a consideration of the ways that the politics of normative childhoods are shaped by discourses of happiness predicated on heteronormativity. Responding to the work of Cristyn Davies and Kerry Robinson (2013, this issue), the authors argue that non-normative families and in particular, non-normative parenting, are obliged to secure, protect and police their children's perceived entitlements to normative ‘happy’ childhoods in order to achieve social legitimacy. Such obligations, they contend, locate non-normative parents and families, rather than societies, as responsible for the effects of discriminatory social norms to which they are subjected. Informed by the work of Jonathan Silin, the authors support a politics of childhood that gives discursive legitimacy to children's voice and experience regarding the ways in which normativity is enforced at their and their families' expense.

Disaster Writing: The Cultural Politics of Catastrophe in Latin America by Mark D. Anderson (review)

Reviewed by: Disaster Writing: The Cultural Politics of Catastrophe in Latin America by Mark D. Anderson Beatriz Rivera-Barnes Anderson, Mark D. Disaster Writing: The Cultural Politics of Catastrophe in Latin America. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2011. 256 pp. This study springs from the author’s decade-long fascination with disaster narratives and the subsequent effort to understand how disasters catalyze both political and culture changes. The result is a very interesting and insightful choice of theme; possibly a new chapter to the methodology known as ecocriticism. The focus is still nature and the role that nature and the natural environment play in the Latin American psyche as perceived through textual representations, but this time disaster is thrown into the mixture. By definition, disaster is considered a rupture of the normal order of things and natural disaster, according to the author, “denotes that moment of disjuncture when nature topples what we see as the natural order of human dominance” (1). In other words, nature ceases to be mother nature and morphs into Medea, who murders her children in a torrent of rage. As a result, the established relationship with the natural environment collapses as does the surrounding landscape. This new situation, the product of disaster, calls for new definitions, attitudes, and cultural discourses. Such a boundless approach to cultural representation calls for certain delimitations from the onset. Consequently, the author chooses to deal with two types of disasters: the sudden-onset, and the long-term recurring disasters. While hurricanes and earthquakes are excellent examples of sudden-onset types of disasters, drought and volcanic activity can be defined as disasters that recur over time. The book is divided into four chapters that take into consideration recurring disasters in Brazil and Central America, and sudden-onset disasters in the Caribbean and in Mexico (even if earthquakes could be considered both recurring and sudden-onset). The first chapter, entitled “Disaster and the New Patria: Cyclone San Zenón and Trujillo’s rewriting of the Dominican Republic,” paves the way for a critical methodology that could be applied to disasters that have occurred all over the world, from terroristic disasters such as September 11, to natural disasters such a Hurricane Katrina and the 2010 Haiti earthquake that unmade not only the Haitian landscape, but its society as well. Here, the paradigm is the Dominican Republic and how a hurricane allowed a dictator to justify his regime. In fact, Dominican history was not only re-written by Trujillo and his entourage, but renamed as well. After the 1939 hurricane, many features of the destroyed landscape were re-christened. While the capital became Ciudad Trujillo, the highest peak on the island became Pico Trujillo, and so on. In other words, Trujillo took full advantage of the devastation: aid came with a price, and the result was his appropriation of the entire nation. This chapter delves into how politicians can turn either a natural disaster or a terroristic disaster to their advantage. Obviously, the political implications of Hurricane Katrina and the 2012 Hurricane Sandy have yet to be brought to light. As Anderson writes in the conclusion, “The experience of disaster frequently catalyzes [End Page 571] political action as individuals and collectivities engage in the assignment of blame as well as the construction of greater security” (191). Chapter two, entitled “Drought and Literary Construction of Risk in Northeastern Brazil,” studies how drought can be defined as a disaster of national significance and consequently how, as a result, Northeastern Brazil embodies what the author Antonio Callado calls a “traditional Brazilian calamity” (24). However, the author argues that things become more complex when literary tropes and themes cannot be traced to a single source (either Trujillo or Brazilian intellectuals interpreting drought from outside the affected region), and “competing representations of disaster vie for discursive legitimacy” (25). Such is the case in chapter three, “Volcanic Identities: Explosive Nationalism and the Disastered Subject in Central American Literature.” Here, the focus is how volcanic activity has contributed to the construction of Central American identity. What distinguishes this analysis from that of the first two chapters is that this progressive expression of identity springs from different voices. In other words, Central American...

Accounting for Lesbian-Headed Families: Lesbian Mothers' Responses to Discursive Challenges

Although lesbian mothers are often called to justify their family's legitimacy, we know little about these interactions. The current study included 44 female coparents across 10 focus groups discussing the interactive process of discursive legitimacy challenges. Using the theoretical framework of remedial accounts (Schönbach, 1990), inductive and deductive coding revealed several existing and new types of challenges, accounting strategies, and evaluations relevant to interactions of lesbian mothers. Communicative processes unique to the interactions of female coparents included challenges emerging from societal master narratives (e.g., health care, education, politics, religion); accounting strategies such as leading by example; and evaluations related to the ways in which children render the family acceptable. Findings offer strategies for coping with the discursive challenges lesbian mothers encounter.

A Framework for Assessing Power in Collaborative Governance Processes

The growing use of collaborative methods of governance raises concerns about the relative power of participants in such processes and the potential for exclusion or domination of some parties. This research offers a framework for assessing power that considers authority, resources, and discursive legitimacy as sources of power and considers the participants, the process design, and the content of collaborative governance processes as arenas for power use. A case study of a collaborative governance process is presented and analyzed using the power framework. Implications for the design of collaborative governance processes are discussed, including the benefits of a multidimensional definition of power, tools for managing power imbalances among participants, and strategies that participants can use to participate more fully in collaborative governance processes.

Applying the ‘comply-or-explain’ principle: discursive legitimacy tactics with regard to codes of corporate governance

The comply-or-explain principle is a central element of most codes of corporate governance. Originally put forward by the Cadbury Committee in the UK as a practical means of establishing a code of corporate governance whilst avoiding an inflexible “one size fits all” approach, it has since been incorporated into code regimes around the world. Companies can either comply with code provisions or may explain why they do not comply, i.e., why they deviate from a code provision. Despite its wide application very little is known about the ways in which comply-or-explain is used. In addressing this we employ legitimacy theory by which explanations for deviating can be understood as means of legitimizing the company’s actions. We analyzed the compliance statements and reports of 257 listed companies in the UK and Germany, producing some 715 records of deviation. From this we generated an empirically derived taxonomy of the explanations. In a second order analysis we examine the underlying logic and identify various legitimacy tactics. We discuss the consequences of these legitimacy tactics for code regimes and the implications for policy makers.

China’s Religious Danwei

This article is a study of the continuities and changes in the state-led institutionalisation of religion in the PRC from 1979 to 2009 and their effects on the structuring of China’s religious field. A normative discourse on religion is constituted by a network of Party leaders, officials, academics, and religious leaders. Official religious institutions have become hybrids of religious culture with the institutional habitus of work units ( danwei) in the socialist market economy. A wide range of religious practices have found legitimacy under secular labels such as health, science, culture, tourism, or heritage. Religious affairs authorities have begun to acknowledge the existence of this expanding realm of religious life, and to accord discursive legitimacy to the previously stigmatised or ignored categories of popular religion and new religions, but hesitate to propose an explicit change in policy.

The Transformational Potential of Public Policy Discourse

In this paper we examine the relationship between public policy, legitimacy and organizational identity in the context of a societal controversy. Public policy is theorized as a mode for effecting discourse transformations which offer new possibilities and rules for organizational legitimacy and societal relations. Our study highlights the legitimating function of public policy formation processes and possible legitimacy-appreciating and-depreciating identity attributes for organizations at the centre of controversy. We develop a macro-level understanding of discursive legitimacy and organizational identity, examining the broader societal context and associated democratic implications of power/knowledge and truth claims.

Autonomous Movements and the Institutional Left: Two Approaches in Tension in Madrid's Anti-globalization Network

This paper explores the configuration of the anti-globalization movement network in Madrid. It identifies a central tension between two different approaches to political practice, which fall along autonomous/institutional lines. Despite ideological heterogeneity and frame convergence on both sides of this ‘divide’, the differences in approach to political practice create real tensions when these groups attempt to work together. These tensions have recently become visible at the European Social Forums (ESFs), and are often superficially treated as a difference between ‘horizontals’ and ‘verticals’. Through an analysis of these tensions with the use of data drawn from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Madrid from 2002 to 2005, I argue that autonomous groups in Madrid benefit from a discursive legitimacy gained from the centrality of autonomous principles in the global movement, but that they are still dependent on institutional left organizations for crucial resources.

Power in Collaborative Rulemaking Processes: Writing the Rules for US Hydroelectric Project Licensing

In the United States, government agencies at the national and state levels increasingly have resolved conflict using collaborative tools such as facilitated negotiation, policy dialogues, mediation, and negotiated rule-making. Despite growing use of these tools, numerous writers caution against the notion that collaboration should be embraced as the preferred solution to complex policy disputes. Concerns have been raised about the relative power and authority of participants in such processes, reflecting the potential for exclusion, domination, or cooptation of some parties. Some research suggests that differences in political resources account for the privileging of some parties in negotiated rulemaking processes (Langbein, 2002). The objective of this research is to enrich our understanding of the forms and expressions of power employed by parties to collaborative rulemaking processes. A collaborative rulemaking process is analyzed using Hardy & Phillips (1998) framework of power to understand the means by which parties attempt to frame the conflict and establish the legitimacy of their claims. This analysis offers insight into how organizations seek to satisfy their interests within a collaborative process through the use of authority, resources and discursive legitimacy. It also illustrates how organizations seek to enhance their discursive legitimacy by linking their efforts to larger societal values.

Forget Baghdad: Roundtrip to the Promised Land

Memory is an empty plate, scarred by scratches from the knife on its skin. —Ronny Someck, "Baghdad," in The Milk Underground1 In his film Forget Baghdad (2003), Samir aims to compensate for the historical "abyss of abandonment" (Hess 1993:7) that looms between the Zionist official story of Israel and its Iraqi chapter through the intimate and poignant reminiscences of five individuals of Baghdadi origin.2 He does this in part by closing in on the faces of the five "actors"—Shimon Ballas, Moshe Moussa Houri, Sami Michael, Samir Naqqash and Ella Shohat –for whom the film offers permission and a vehicle to travel to their ancestral homeland and, to a certain extent, to the self. What have been, in the Israeli rhetorical climate, spurned fragments in a linear journey—a one-way-ticket to the Promised Land—is transformed into a roundtrip journey, characterized by endless loops and coils. Significantly, the film opens with a top-down view of a man's suited legs walking through an airport; in the background is heard an announcement of the imminent departure of an El Al flight to Tel Aviv. Airport sounds merge and then give way to Lebanese composer Rabih Abou-Khalil's multicultural jazz instrumental, "Got to Go Home," which is somewhat reminiscent [End Page 133] of the "Pink Panther" theme song. Both the music and the audible display of the film's title and credits, by way of typewritten font, clinch the detective story-like documentary nature of Samir's nearly two-hour film.3 This essay attempts to contribute to increasing the visibility of Baghdad as an originary site of Israeli and US Jewish minorities. In "Forget Baghdad," the hybrid, hyphenated identity of Iraqi-Jews or Arab-Jews is presented within the context of European colonialism and modernity, and situated on the extended cultural map of the Jewish diaspora in the "East" from Baghdad to Teheran and Mumbai. I aim to expand the visual archive of ethnography and its representation beyond "writing culture" or "reading culture" to include viewing as an important aspect of the discursive practices of cultures. Ever since Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, the media representation of Iraq and Baghdad has been ideologically veneered by US foreign policy, contributing to an essentialized, Orientalist portrait of what is in reality a finely textured "culturescape." As a visual ethnography that takes memory as its subject, "Forget Baghdad" redresses the tendency to represent Iraq and its Jewish minority culture as abstractions, as a chapter in Jewish history that lacks historical context and legitimacy. It is one thing to return to a place that is associated with violence, collective or personal, and another to return to the place that was forsaken for the hope of a better one. The viewer quickly discovers that Baghdad is a place that invokes both trauma and solace. The trauma of Baghdad inheres in the fact of its exile from Israeli memory, but, as the film underscores, it is only through memory that Baghdad can be recuperated and reclaimed as part of Israeli cultural history. Baghdad appears in the film as a place of origin, a cultural reference, and a genealogy.4 But, as I highlight in this essay, the film is not so much about Baghdad and everyday life there prior to emigration, but about the memory of the city as it is informed by the experience of being Israeli today, fifty-two years or so later. The idea of "going back," therefore, is part of a wider discussion of discursive legitimacy and recently invented strategies to effectively participate in the public debates on ethnicities and cultures of origin.5 The key questions are what kinds of narratives are produced from this cinematic site, and what is the nature of this memory? The main issues at stake are not only the permission to go back, in conjunction with the nostalgic and sentimental value inherent in going back, but...

Discourse and adoption of innovations: a study of HIV/AIDS treatments.

This article, based on a longitudinal case study, investigates the development, testing, and adoption of innovations in the treatment of HIV/AIDS. Findings indicate that distinguishing between "evidence production" and "adoption" can be difficult because the adoption of innovations is a negotiated outcome and the nature and role of evidence are not given, stable and exogenous to the adoption process. This means that changes to the distribution of discursive legitimacy and credibility in an adopting system can change evidence production and evaluation, and hence patterns of adoption of innovations.