Discursive Opportunities Research Articles

Socialist Legacies, Discursive Opportunities and the Diffusion of Anti-GM Crops Discourse in Post-Socialist China

Socialist Legacies, Discursive Opportunities and the Diffusion of Anti-GM Crops Discourse in Post-Socialist China

New Rage, New Perspectives?

The Eurozone crisis has led to a long and remarkable protest wave. Civil society raised its voice against the ever-harsher austerity measures implemented to deal with the crisis. The article focuses on the role of civil society and its potential to contribute new perspectives to the debate. Such a contribution would depend on two preconditions: 1. Civil society actors need to mobilize successfully to make their voices heard. 2. Civil society actors contribute a perspective that differs to the perspectives of actors from institutionalized politics. Both preconditions are analyzed empirically for two countries that are in very different situations in the crisis scenario: Greece and Germany. Greece has been hit most severely by the crisis; Germany is the most prominent country defining the crisis management, and it provides the largest share of credit guarantees for “crisis countries.” Social movement theory is used to explain the differing evolution of protests in the two countries. In the early phase of the crisis, the established landscape of political parties in both countries offered few opportunities for their citizens to vote in opposition to the crisis management, which is conducive to extra-parliamentary protest. Differences in deprivation, discursive opportunities and the resource basis of mobilization structures can explain differences in protest frequency but also to some extent the evolution of protest over time. Taking up Habermas’ argument regarding the specific perspective of civil society actors in the public debate, we then analyze to which extent the arguments of civil society actors deviate from those of more institutionalized actors. A discursive actor attribution analysis unveils that civil society actors are more sensitive to social problems and grand systemic questions. Moreover, civil society actors are less hesitant to blame actors on the EU level and other EU Member States, even though their overall contribution to the crisis debate is rather marginal.

Race, Religion, or Culture? Framing Islam between Racism and Neo-Racism in the Online Network of the French Far Right

When debates about Islam acquire importance in the public sphere, does the far right adhere to traditional racist arguments, risking marginalization, or does it conform to mainstream values to attain legitimacy in the political system? Focusing on the aftermath of the 2015 terrorist attacks in France, I explore the framing of Islam, discussing how the far right’s nativist arguments were reformulated to engage with available discursive opportunities and dominant conceptions of the national identity. By looking at actors in the protest and the electoral arenas, I examine the interplay between the choice of anti-Islam frames and baseline national values.I offer a novel mixed-method approach to study political discourses, combining social network analysis of the links between seventy-seven far-right websites with a qualitative frame analysis of online material. It also includes measures of online visibility of these websites to assess their audiences. The results confirm that anti-Islam frames are couched along a spectrum of discursive opportunity, where actors can either opt to justify opposition to Islam based on interpretations of core national values (culture and religion) or mobilize on strictly oppositional values (biological racism). The framing strategy providing most online visibility is based on neo-racist arguments. While this strategy allows distortion of baseline national values of secularity and republicanism, without breaching the social contract, it is also a danger for organizations that made “opposition to the system” their trademark. While the results owe much to the French context, the conclusions draw broader implications as to the far right going mainstream.

Polish Right-Wing Populism in the Era of Social Media

By employing the concepts of opportunity structure and discursive opportunities as a theoretical background, this paper aims to identify and analyze the factors that may have led to the breakthroughs of two right-wing political actors in Poland in 2014–2015: Paweł Kukiz and his Kukiz’15 movement and Janusz Korwin-Mikke and his political initiatives. In our study we focused on several issues: the political, economic, and social context; the visibility provided by traditional media; widespread usage of social media; correspondence of the content of messages to expectations and political preferences; and radicalization of the agenda of the Law and Justice party (PiS), which contributed to the resonance and legitimacy of populist claims.

Discursive Opportunities and Strategy-Making in Social Organizations: A Conceptual Framework

Due to scarce resources, social organizations are characterized by a high need to collaborate in order to achieve their social goals. Compared to for-profit organizations, their value-based approach in strategizing links closely to their identity, which makes collaboration a challenging task. Drawing on Fairclough’s orders of discourse, we develop a conceptual framework that explains how social organizations find coherence or contradiction in their strategy-identity-narratives which results in interorganizational strategizing or, alternatively, in identity differentiation. We explore strategy formation as a discursive event that occurs when a discursive opportunity arises. We contribute to theory in strategy as practice by showing that for social organizations, strategy is co-constituted with identity, and to theory on entrepreneurial opportunities by introducing discursive opportunities to the field.

The Dynamics of Discursive Opportunities in the Hmong Campaign for Inclusion in California

(2018). The Dynamics of Discursive Opportunities in the Hmong Campaign for Inclusion in California. Amerasia Journal: Vol. 44, No. 2, pp. 65-87.

Mobilizing in transnational contentious spaces: linking relations, emotions and space in migrant activism

ABSTRACTDespite proliferation of political protest by migrants in recent years, analyses from a social movement perspective remain scarce. This lacuna is not coincidental, but theoretically grounded. According to dominant movement theories, migrants are unlikely subjects of mobilization due to legal obstacles, scarce resources and closed political and discursive opportunities. The article therefore explores how marginalized migrants organize transnational political protest against all evident odds. Drawing from extensive fieldwork and bridging transnational migration and social movement studies, it is argued that migrants mobilize within transnational social spaces, which link relations and emotions acquired on the move with the relational qualities at the locality of arrival. The article illustrates how the transnational spaces most migrants inhabit can be politicized and transformed into particular social formations, for which the term ‘transnational contentious spaces’ is suggested.

Media Visibility and Inclusion of Radical Right Populism in Hungary and Romania

This article investigates the discursive opportunities for radical-right populist politics in Hungary and Romania. We argue that it is important to assess whether the discursive activities of radical-right media are reflected and included in the chains of discussion in the public sphere. The involvement and visibility of radical-right media in news coverage is considered a cue for their acceptance as legitimate actors in the wider media ecosystem, even when other media may not accept their interpretations. Our findings tell two different stories in the compared countries. In Hungary, we note that radical-right media are to a certain degree incorporated into the wider media networks, while in Romania, radical-right media are observed to be in isolated positions in both of the media networks we examined.

Discursive Opportunities for the Estonian Populist Radical Right in a Digital Society

This article analyzes the discursive opportunities, narratives, and dominant themes used by the Conservative People’s Party of Estonia (EKRE), a new populist radical right party, to achieve increasing visibility. Applying thematic analysis of EKRE’s social media content, we identify four main groups of issues that have formed the mainstay of EKRE’s political communication and framed the narrative that social media channels have disseminated: an anti-Russian stance, Euroskepticism, promotion of family values, and an anti-refugee discourse. We conclude that EKRE has successfully capitalized on specific conditions in the public sphere to increase its popularity.

Not in Your Backyard! Organizational Structure, Partisanship, and the Mobilization of Nonbeneficiary Constituents against “Fracking” in Illinois, 2013–2014

In the interest of enlarging their constituencies, social movements often broaden mobilization efforts beyond the directly aggrieved, beneficiary populations. The authors examine this process through an analysis of a movement against unconventional oil and gas development (UOGD or “fracking”) in Illinois. Using data on more than 37,000 public comments submitted during a regulatory review of fracking, the authors examine the composition of the antifracking movement’s constituency. Individuals residing outside the targeted development region submitted the vast majority of the comments opposing UOGD. Analyses reveal that these participants tend to be Democratic partisans who were affiliated with one or more large environmental and progressive organizations. The study offers new insight into how environmental and progressive issue campaigns are organized in the contemporary U.S. context. The authors highlight how partisan discursive opportunities combine with recent organizational innovations in the social movement sector to enable nascent single-issue campaigns to tap into the mobilization potential of motivated partisans.

Public discourse on minorities: how discursive opportunities shape representative patterns in the Netherlands and the UK

Recent literature on discursive opportunities shows broad consensus on the importance of media communication in determining the success of minority mobilization. However, the impact of media discourse on formal forms of political participation is less clear. This article examines to what extent, if any, media coverage on immigrant minorities shapes the parliamentary activities of “minority representatives” in the Netherlands and the UK. We investigate whether salience and tone on minorities have impact on how often and in what ways minority members of parliament address ethnic and/or religious constituencies. To study this relationship between media coverage and parliamentary activity, we conduct two separate content analyses of parliamentary questions and newspapers between 2002 and 2012 in the Netherlands and the UK. Multivariate analyses reveal that a more negative tone in newspaper coverage results in more suppressive framing in the Dutch parliament. Our findings for the British case indicate a negative effect of media salience and minority presence on parliamentary salience.

Occupy the government: Analyzing presidential and congressional discursive response to movement repression

I examine the role of Occupy Wall Street in shifting presidential and congressional discourse on economic fairness and inequality. Using data from 4646 presidential speeches and 1256 congressional records from 2009 to 2015, I test different mechanisms, including repression, media coverage, public opinion, and presidential agenda-setting by applying a novel combination of web scraping, natural language processing, and time series models. I suggest that movement success can be measured in its ability to shape discursive opportunity structures, and I argue that the role of the president should be at the forefront of social movements research. Ultimately, I demonstrate (1) that the repression of Occupy protesters not only predicts media coverage but also increases discursive opportunities through President Obama and Congress, (2) that media coverage of Occupy predicts presidential discourse, (3) that the president's rhetorical shift increases congressional response, and (4) that this change persists after the movement faltered.

Movement/countermovement interaction and instrumental framing in a multi-level world: rooting Polish lesbian and gay activism

This article explores how movements frame their claims and identities in response to opposing movements. We build on previous scholarship by tracing how movements instrumentally navigate such a response – aligning new frames with their old ones – as interactions between opposing movements persist. The case of Poland demonstrates how the lesbian and gay (LG) movement’s frames developed from embracing universal and European themes to more rooted politics. We show how external discursive opportunities surrounding European Union accession shaped the frames of both the movement and its opposition around similar resonant themes, though with distinct interpretations. The countermovement converged around a frame of external forces imposing values on the nation – largely in a differentiated response to the international human rights frames touted by the LG movement initially. The LG movement responded strategically by emphasizing its Polishness in frames that signal a far more rooted politics of sexuality than before. These findings confirm much of what research has established concerning the relationship between opposing movements, but they also go beyond it, exploring how multi-level discursive opportunities can emerge simultaneously for both movements, leading to a contest of interpreting the politically potent symbols that come to the fore. Drawing on multiple years of fieldwork with Polish civil society actors, we use content analysis to trace the trajectory of the LG movement’s frames, making the crucial point that they are shaped by ongoing movement/countermovement interactions, as well as the multi-level discursive context in which they operate.

Crowding-in: how Indian civil society organizations began mobilizing around climate change.

This paper argues that periodic waves of crowding-in to 'hot' issue fields are a recurring feature of how globally networked civil society organizations operate, especially in countries of the Global South. We elaborate on this argument through a study of Indian civil society mobilization around climate change. Five key mechanisms contribute to crowding-in processes: (1) the expansion of discursive opportunities; (2) the event effects of global climate change conferences; (3) the network effects created by expanding global civil society networks; (4) the adoption and innovation of action repertoires; and (5) global pressure effects creating new opportunities for civil society. Our findings contribute to the world society literature, with an account of the social mechanisms through which global institutions and political events affect national civil societies, and to the social movements literature by showing that developments in world society are essential contributors to national mobilization processes.

Drawings as imaginative expressions of philosophical ideas in a Grade 2 South African literacy classroom

This article reports on a philosophy for children (P4C) literacy project in a South African foundation phase classroom that introduces an important new focus in the P4C classroom: the visualisation of philosophical ideas provoked by the picture book The Big Ugly Monster and the Little Stone Rabbit (2004) by Chris Wormell, giving voice to young children’s own imaginative ideas and beliefs (in this case about death). This research shows how a particular use of the community of philosophical enquiry pedagogy combined with the making of drawings necessitates a rethinking of what ‘voice’ means. We conclude that the children’s drawings bring something new into existence, thereby offering unique material and discursive opportunities for all children, including those who otherwise might not have expressed their ideas.Keywords: Comprehension; emergent literacy; visual research; community of enquiry; philosophy with children; picturebooks; death; voice; inclusion; participation

When love meets hate: The relationship between state policies on gay and lesbian rights and hate crime incidence

Do public policies on gay and lesbian rights affect the incidence of hate crimes based on sexual orientation? We propose that legal inequalities increase hate crimes because they provide discursive opportunities for bias, discrimination, and violence. Legal equality, however, will reduce violence. Using annual panel data from 2000 to 2012, a period of substantial policy change, we analyze how three state policies affect reported hate crimes: same-sex partnerships, employment non-discrimination, and hate crime laws. Hate crime and employment non-discrimination laws that include sexual orientation reduce hate crime incidence. Partnership recognition increases reported hate crimes, though it may not increase actual crime incidence. Because incidence is spatially correlated, policy changes in one state yield spillover benefits in other states. These results provide some of the first quantitative evidence that public policies affect hate crimes based on sexual orientation. Findings confirm the roles of institutional heterosexism and discursive opportunities in producing hate crimes.

Discontinuous Narrative, Ojibwe Sovereignty, and the <em>Wiindigoo</em> Logic of Settler Colonialism: Louise Erdrich's Marn Wolde

The dominant consensus among interpretations of Louise Erdrich's novel The Plague of Doves (2008) represents Marn Wolde as a victim figure, abused by her husband Billy Peace (Hudson 47-52, Strehle 119, Valentino 131-2, Roemer 122-3, 129). This characterization of Marn emerges coherently when the novel is read continuously and linearly, and especially when Marn's story is interpreted independently of other narrations within the novel and in isolation from its earlier form as “Satan: Hijacker of a Planet,” first published in The Atlantic (August 1997). A rather different profile of this narrator-character emerges when Marn is read discontinuously, across the narrations offered by five distinct narrators, across Erdrich's wider oeuvre, and across her extraordinarily wide range of intertextual allusions to Ojibwe stories, the Bible, the midrashim, the Kabbalah, and Paradise Lost. The tension between covert symbolic convergence and overt narrative discontinuity, I argue, is key to the demand that her writing be interpreted in ever-widening contexts, in order to reveal the possessive logic of settler sovereignty, on the one hand, and to constitute Ojibwe sovereignty, on the other. Framed by Marn's traumatic story of domestic, sexual, and spiritual abuse at the hands of her husband, it is easy to forget that the narrative she tells is the story of how she came to murder her husband and walk away with sole possession of their money and land. The fragmented and unreliable nature of her narration reveals the ways in which she rationalizes her entitlement to kill in order to possess; that is, the ways in which her discourse exemplifies the possessive logic of settler sovereignty. At the same time, the very unreliability of her narration opens discursive opportunities which reveal the repressed meaning of her actions as a traumatic repetition of the historic lynching with which the novel begins. Settler land hunger, symbolized here and elsewhere in Erdrich's writing in Ojibwe terms as a wiindigoo psychosis, emerges in the interstices of Marn's narration to disrupt the logic of settler entitlement to indigenous land.

Electoral participation of Muslims in Europe: assessing the impact of institutional and discursive opportunities

ABSTRACTThis paper explores the hypothesis that the electoral participation of Muslims varies according to two main types of opportunities, namely, institutional and discursive opportunities (DOs), characterising their country of residence. More specifically, we assess the impact of institutional opportunities (IOs) in terms of civic and cultural dimensions. We then add up the analysis of DOs in their quality of legitimating public debates over Muslims. We conduct our study by relating survey data to standardised contextual indicators of institutional and DOs in four European countries. The results show that both institutional and DOs have an impact, under control of a number of individual characteristics. However, while the civic and cultural dimensions of IOs have an equally important effect, we find that DOs are less crucial for Muslims’ electoral participation. A number of broader implications of these findings are discussed.

State Behavior and the Intensification of Intellectual Criticism in China

This article suggests that despite the state’s extensive efforts to curtail Chinese intellectuals’ expression, other state behaviors also stimulate and enable boundary-pushers to expand the limits of the permissible. It argues that intensifying intellectual criticism in the domain of social stability and protest during the Hu Jintao era was an unintended consequence of the political leadership’s accommodating responses to rising societal pressures. First, leaders became considerably more outspoken on proliferating protests and articulated stricter prescriptions for local official behavior. Second, adapting to a more assertive Internet and news media, censorship was relaxed and major protests became much more visible. The resulting discursive opportunities enabled trailblazing academics to question the prevailing logic of stability and open the sensitive topic to a broad circle of commentators. Subsequently, the central government has initiated a round of ongoing policy and institutional adjustments. Criticism thus has both stabilizing and destabilizing implications. It contributes to the rectification of policy and institutional failure, but it weakens the Communist Party’s legitimatory narrative and has pushed regime-defining questions, in particular the lack of protest institutionalization, onto the public agenda.

Anthropology through Levinas

An anthropological commonplace since Evans-Pritchard has been that ethnographic subjects will have their rationality circumscribed by the discursive opportunities made available by a “culture.” Hence, social science comes to terms with the “internal” nature of judgements (Winch). Ultimately, the relativist nature of both Winch’s and Evans-Pritchard’s conclusion has its source in Wittgenstein’s philosophy. For Wittgenstein, “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” Moreover, “language” in this connection extends to the “textual” nature of behavior per se. There exists a determining habituation of embodiment and dwelling as well as of reasoning, believing, and talking. This article explores the nature of a pretextual or nontextual sphere that exists beyond conventional—“cultural”—languages. Wittgensteinian assumptions are set against those of Max Stirner and Emmanuel Levinas. While in many ways disparate, the writings of Stirner on the ego and of Levinas on the “other” both insist that knowledge can be derived—knowledge, indeed, of a fundamental, even absolute, nature—by way of a transcending of a taken-for-granted symbolic, conceptual, textual, and doctrinal language-world. What is key is the attention one pays to corporeality: to the “flesh and mind” of the self (Stirner), to the “body and face” of the other (Levinas). The article is theoretical and epistemological in register. An ethnographic afterword points in the direction of how the argument might be grounded in representations of fieldwork encounters.