Discursive Struggle Research Articles

‘He’s a battler. He’s not a quitter:’ the narrative framing of Jerry Kill’s health-related organizational exit

ABSTRACTThe abrupt retirement of Jerry Kill, the University of Minnesota’s head football coach, for health reasons during the 2015 season ignited intensely emotional reactions from diverse organizational stakeholders. Our essay analyzes the public discourses surrounding Kill’s organizational exit. Specifically, we explore how audiences co-constructed multiple and conflicting narratives about his departure, concurrently praising and blaming Kill for his body management. We highlight how these discourses construct complex subjectivities for working individuals who experience chronic illness. We conclude by discussing how the narrative frames implicate broader discursive struggles between the cultural values of health and work.

Public Storylines in the British Transition from Rail to Road Transport (1896–2000): Discursive Struggles in the Multi-Level Perspective

ABSTRACTAn analysis of the transition from railways to highways as the dominant British transport system during the twentieth century shows that public storylines about competing niche and regime technologies can have a powerful influence on socio-technical transitions. These storylines are developed by supporters and opponents of the competing technologies, with each group attempting to frame their favoured technology positively. The public salience of these storylines can be evaluated by assessing how highly they score on four elements of frame resonance: empirical fit, experiential commensurability, actor credibility, and macro-cultural resonance. These storylines can be seen at play across the entirety of the transition to a road-based transport system, from the very early history of the automobile through to the turn of the millennium, when public opposition to road transport was becoming increasingly pronounced. This case study uniquely traces discursive conflict over the entire course of a multi-decade transition. While existing literature in the multi-level perspective typically emphasises the disadvantages faced by niche-innovations, this case study shows that powerful storylines, enabled by the right cultural repertoires and possibly negative storylines about existing socio-technical systems, can create powerful political support for a new technology, giving it an advantage against more established incumbents.

Discursive Struggle and Agency—Updating the Finnish Peatland Conservation Network

This paper explores the process of updating the peatland conservation network in Finland—the Supplemental Mire Conservation Programme, which was drafted from 2012 to 2015. This study employs discursive agency approach (DAA), to reveal how agents actively seek to gain legitimate speaker positions and influence policy outcomes as they rely on existing discourses. It also studies the role of discourse in the context of Finnish peatland conservation policy and evaluates the role of agents in the discursive process and how they influenced the outcome. The empirical data consists of expert interviews, newspaper articles and policy documents. The results indicate that the discourses of ‘maintenance of biodiversity’, ‘regulatory program’, ‘voluntary conservation’ and ‘participatory approach’ influence the peatland conservation policy. Additionally, discursive agency is achieved through hegemonic discourse and a consensus seeking argumentation strategy that rely on keywords, such voluntary and sustainability.

Accounting signifiers, political discourse, popular resistance and legal identity during Pakistan Steel Mills attempted privatization

Abstract Using the privatization of Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) as an empirical site and drawing on Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985) discourse theory, this paper traces the discursive struggle between two discourses on the valuation and privatization of PSM. Specific signifiers were articulated and re-articulated into different chains of equivalence to create an appeal for each discourse surrounding the steel mill’s valuation. The anti-privatization discourse’s ‘success’ derived from its ‘interdiscursivity’ i.e. drawing on disparate signifiers from different meta-discourses; accounting, nationalism, state corruption and ‘informal’ signifiers such as ‘family silver’, ‘market value’ and ‘throw away price’. In contrast, the pro-privatization discourse drew on a homogenous (financial) economics discourse using more formal and technical signifiers such as ‘going concern’ and ‘sensitivity adjusted discounted cash flow value’. The anti-privatization discourse, with its diverse and informal (accounting) signifiers gained ‘empirical validity’, ‘narrative fidelity’, ‘and experiential commensurability’, appealed more to the masses, the media, and the judiciary. It convinced them selling PSM was a grave injustice, which must be prevented. Hence the Supreme Court reversed the privatization decision, which soured executive-judiciary relations, and led the military government to suspend the Chief Justice of Pakistan, and later the judiciary, media outlets, and the Constitution, which precipitated a successful social movement for an independent judiciary and the restoration of democracy. Events were shaped by the various interests of parties concerned and created new identities for them. The paper concludes by reflecting on how the findings contribute to, and add new issues for accounting research using discourse analysis.

‘Anne goes rogue for abortion rights!’: Hashtag feminism and the polyphonic nature of activist discourse

In the emerging context of hashtag feminism, this article explores the #SupportIslandWomen pro-choice initiative in Prince Edward Island (PEI), Canada. The movement gained visibility by using the altered image of Anne of Green Gables (rogue Anne) on posters and graffiti throughout PEI and on social media. Drawing from organizational discourse theory, we analyse how rogue Anne was invoked by activists who spoke in her name, thus enacting the polyphonic nature of discourse. Our case study was built by performing non-participant observation online and by conducting a search in Canadian blogs and newspapers. First, we detail the discursive practices developed within the #SupportIslandWomen movement and underline their constitutive effects, namely, by focusing on the organizing properties of the hashtag feature. Then, we investigate the benefits and limitations of using rogue Anne as a unifying symbol and reflect on the discursive struggles that led to and were generated by her usurpation.

Health care policy at a crossroads? A discursive study of patient agency in national health quality strategies between 1993 and 2015.

The Danish health care sector currently undergoes changes that imply a gradual transition from an evidence-based activity model to a value-based quality model centered on patient involvement and value-based governance. The patient naturally occupies a central position in health care, and the transition therefore raises important questions about health care quality and how successive national health quality strategies value quality and ascribe roles and agency to patients. To explore the complexity of these quality strategies, we analyze and discuss how political discourse moments influence the contents of the national health quality strategies and how variation in the construal of patient roles and agency indicates discursive struggle in Danish national health care policy. Underlying theoretical concepts are informed by New Public Management, the welfare state, health communication, and discourse theory. Our analytical approach is inspired by Critical Discourse Analysis and combines content analysis with linguistic analysis.

Religion, Democracy and the ‘Dawla Madaniyya’ of the Arab Spring

ABSTRACTThe object of this article is to review and evaluate a debate that has been taking place among Muslim and Arab writers for some time now about the concept of ‘dawla madaniyya’ (‘civil state/government’), and the place of religion in democratic politics. More precisely, it will be suggested that the current popularity of the term ‘dawla madaniyya’ signifies only a partial meeting of minds between Islamists and their liberal and secular opponents. By and large, the concept seems to have an instrumental value as part of an on-going discursive struggle between various political orientations about the place of Islam in the social–political order. On the basis of our discussion of the terms of the debate, a new approach to conceptualizing the disagreement will be suggested. The goal of this is not to resolve the disagreement, but rather to sharpen it in a way that shows what is required to achieve significant progress. The final resolution of the disagreement must await a more radical convergence of ideas than currently exists – a convergence that touches not only on standards of reasonableness but also on substantive beliefs and values.

동남아시아의 예술선언문 : 1970년대 ‘새로움’과 ‘현실’, 그리고 ‘구체성’ 사이에서의 담론 투쟁

This paper traces and examines the discursive struggle between the ‘new’, the ‘real’ and the ‘concrete’ in art manifestos produced in Southeast Asia. The concept of a “calibrated terminology” was proposed by curator and cultural theorist Marian Pastor Roces as an approach to go beyond the use of art lexicons that emerge from social and cultural conditions circumscribed by the West, to a more nuanced understanding of terms bearing affinities with local contexts that constantly negotiate with the international. This paper examines two terms, the new and the real in art manifestos as floating signifiers defined as privileged elements inexhibitionary discourses whose meanings are constantly negotiated and contested. Discourse is conceived as the fixing of the meaning of elements in an order of discourse – the exhibitionary discourse. A discursive moment is understood as the moment when hegemony is established over the meaning of a term. Hegemonic discourses are destabalised by the floating signifiers of the new and the real that converge in the concrete as a calibrated terminology that forms an inter-discursive exhibitionary discourse. Intersections between the ‘new’ and the ‘real’ coalesce in the ‘concrete’ as a calibrated terminology and a floating signifier in the inter-discursive struggle for hegemony in the exhibitionary discourse on art in post-war Southeast Asia driven by art manifestosin theoverlapping contexts of the Cold War, student radicalization, nationalisms, the establishment of authoritarian regimes and the process of decolonization. The artist collectives that were actively producing art manifestos across southeast Asia in the 1970sexamined in this paper include the Modern Art Society (Singapore), the Kaisahan(Solidarity, Philippines), GerakanSeniRupaBaru(New Art Movement, GSRB, Indonesia) exhibitions, and The Artists’ Front of Thailand (TAFT, Thailand).

Liberation Through Narrativity: A Case of Organization Reconstruction Through Strategic Storytelling

This paper examines the ebb and flow of organizational power and control during an organizational change where a CEO mobilized narratives to liberate his company from top-down control. The emergent conceptual model makes sense of what appears to be discursive disorder – a cacophony of change narratives. Its contribution is twofold. Firstly, by identifying three ‘narratives in the making’ – the initial, counter and corrective narratives, it elaborates the meso-level narrative mechanisms at the heart of discursive struggles during change and extends Boje’s (2010) triad of narrativity. Secondly, it confirms the utility of the ‘organizational becoming’ and CCO perspectives of organizing for understanding change.

Making Up Creative Placemaking

Creative placemaking is an increasingly prevalent form of planning practice that invokes arts and culture as tools for revitalization. Planners, policymakers, funders, and practitioners are engaged in a discursive struggle to define what is meant by creative placemaking and what value it holds for cities. Using frameworks developed by Foucault and Hacking, I analyze the emergence and ongoing contestation of this term, contrasting the way creative placemaking is understood and enacted by actors in Philadelphia with definitions employed by national funders. I argue that practitioner and community voices deserve amplification in the unfinished work of creative placemaking as urban practice.

Portrayal Of Women In Nigerian News Magazine

News stories and items have contributed to the subjugation of one sex while increasing the visibility of the other. The way and manner gender is represented have been and will continue to be a subject of discursive struggle between pro-feminists and anti-feminists. However, most studies seem to concentrate on newspapers and advertisements using pictures and images as units of analysis at the near exclusion of news magazines and news stories. This has necessitated having the beam light on news magazines and specifically on news stories. This study therefore examined Tell and The News magazine to ascertain the portrayal of women in the news and consequently formed research questions to test the invisibility and under representativeness of women in Nigeria news. Using content analysis of the sampled magazine from January 2014 to June 2014, the study found out amongst other things that women are underrepresented in the news as subject and reporters. Also, the work is linked to media framing theory which posits that the way the media selects some aspects of a perceived reality and makes them more salient in a communication text, promotes a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described”. The paper therefore recommends increased visibility of women in the media through training of communication teachers and incorporating gender course in schools and also doggedness when the going gets tough as expected.

The Internet as a global good: UNESCO’s attempt to negotiate an international framework for universal access to cyberspace

The article analyzes one of the earliest intergovernmental initiatives regarding Internet constitutionalism. Based on an analytical framework that combines argumentative discourse analysis with elements from actor–network theory, it assesses the actors and discourses involved in the preparation of an international recommendation on universal access to the Internet, adopted by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2003. During the contentious negotiations, UNESCO had to find a balance between the divergent positions of its member states and to account for the different levels of technological development amongst them. By retracing the performative and discursive struggles that UNESCO had to face to reach consensus, the article contributes to the general understanding of ideas and practices behind Internet policy making in international settings.

Tracking the viral spread of incivility on social networking sites: The case of cursing in online discussions of Hong Kong–Mainland China conflict

Scholars are increasingly concerned with the polarizing nature of incivility which extends from the offline context to interactions on social networking sites. Although this is a common concern in the literature, few studies have empirically tested whether online swearing behaviors are purely individual acts of uttering strong emotion or contagious social practices that may heighten group polarization. Using the case of Hong Kong–Mainland China conflict, the current study taps into the discursive struggles in Sina Weibo discussion over contentious issues that provoke major conflicts between Hong Kong and Mainland China residents, with a focus on the use and diffusion of swear words. To explore the mechanism that underlies the virality of swearing on Sina Weibo, this study links the expressive and social functions of swearing to its linguistic contexts. Our findings show that emotion is not the single motivating factor. Personal pronouns—which the swearers used as positioning devices and identity markers—are the most important predictor. The effects of source cues particular to social networking site settings were also examined.

The Discursive Paradox of Environmental Conflict: Between Ecologism and Economism in Ecuador

Ecuador in times of the Rafael Correa government constitutes a prime example of the paradox of environmental conflict, in which all involved actors claim to represent the true vanguard concerning safeguarding of the environment and human conditions. The country presents the ecologically most progressive constitution in the world and also incorporates far-reaching recognition of indigenous peoples’ rights. Notwithstanding, the economy remains reliant on extractivism and the government argues that the revenues of extractive industries benefit the common good. Anchored in a distinction between environmentalism and ecologism, this article identifies and problematizes dominant narratives among the actors of the contentious discursive scenarios, and analyses how the state and its ecological-indigenous opposition aim to position themselves within the political conflict. The central questions are: How are eco-progressive politics perceived, defined and expressed in this setting of an intercultural and plurinational society economically reliant on natural resource extraction? Which values, interests and ontological assumptions are at stake and how are these expressed in the discursive struggle? The research is based on several years of ethnographic fieldwork, combined with critical reading of the previous literature and discourse analysis. The article contributes to politico-environmental debates in Ecuador and beyond and shows that environmental struggle is entangled in broader political disputes conditioned by global economic structures. It likewise communicates with debates on argumentative discourse and illustrates that the same core arguments can constitute the argumentative basis of rivalling actors in political struggles, thus emphasizing the centrality of the contextual framing amid ontological divides in contentious discursive settings.

Contesting market rationality: Discursive struggles over prison privatization

Market rationality suffuses many areas of modern criminal justice. Prison privatization is one area in which market rationality is particularly salient. This paper presents a case study of how market rationality was deployed in public discourse on prison privatization. It answers four questions: (1) Who shaped public discourse on prison privatization? (2) How frequently were market-rational themes invoked in the public discourse?, (3) Who employed (and who avoided) market-rational themes in the discourse?, and (4) Why did rates of market-rational discourse change over time? To answer these questions, the paper analyzes public discourse in four major American newspapers from 1985 to 2008. It employs a series of descriptive statistics and regression analyses, as well as an underutilized method—formal decomposition analysis. The research contributes to historical knowledge of the development of prison privatization, methodological techniques for analyzing textual data, and theoretical understanding of how public actors engage in discursive struggles over the meaning of criminal justice policies.

Discursive struggles between bidding and target companies: an analysis of press releases issued during hostile takeover bids

What are the types of interactions in the discursive struggles between the two parties involved in a hostile takeover bid? How is the legitimacy of the bid (de) constructed by both the bidding and target companies during their discursive struggles? This paper aims at addressing these research questions. Discursive struggles between the bidding and target companies are studied in a sample of 66 press releases related to seven hostile takeover bids approved by the French Market Regulator between December 2006 and December 2014. A study of the sequence followed by each party in issuing their press releases confirms the existence of strong interactions in all the hostile takeover bids studied. Using a manual content analysis methodology, we find that the disclosures made by the bidding and target companies consist of a series of attacks and defenses in which target companies are particularly offensive. We also give evidence that the two companies use legitimation, (de) legitimation and (re) legitimation arguments during discursive struggles, revealing the reciprocity of the communication between the two protagonists. We underline the symbolic or strategic dimensions of these legitimacy strategies in the view of the outcome of bids. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings for regulators and make suggestions for future research. Based on the metaphor of ventriloquism, our research highlights the importance of considering disclosures as a dynamic and mutual influence process.

‘Making a Difference’: The performative role of values in the constitution of organizations

This study provides an overview of the current literature of organizational values and offers a research agenda for the future investigation of values from a performative perspective. The article encourages methodological pluralism by indicating ways of studying how organizational values exhibit both ordering and disordering agency, and how the same value can have different modes of manifestation (espoused, attributed, shared, and/or aspirational, negotiated, and/or embodied/ embodying). By drawing on ethnographic methods and a study of a cooperative organization, the paper makes a twofold contribution to management and organization studies. Namely, the findings show that: a) values have ordering properties, since they foster identification and collective action when invoked by managers in day-to-day work; and b) values have disordering properties (generating tensions, resistance and discursive struggles) when these position people to speak on their behalf.

The Internet as a Global Good: UNESCO’s Attempt to Negotiate an International Framework for Universal Access to Cyberspace

The article analyzes one of the earliest intergovernmental initiatives regarding Internet constitutionalism. Based on an analytical framework that combines argumentative discourse analysis with elements from actor–network theory, it assesses the actors and discourses involved in the preparation of an international recommendation on universal access to the Internet, adopted by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2003. During the contentious negotiations, UNESCO had to find a balance between the divergent positions of its member states and to account for the different levels of technological development amongst them. By retracing the performative and discursive struggles that UNESCO had to face to reach consensus, the article contributes to the general understanding of ideas and practices behind Internet policy making in international settings.

Zapatystowska rewolucja polityczno-komunikacyjna (cz. II)

1 stycznia 1994 roku Zapatystowska Armia Wyzwolenia Narodowego (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN) rozpoczęła powstanie w meksykańskim stanie Chiapas wymierzone w neoliberalne przemiany w Meksyku oraz politykę władz wobec rdzennych mieszkańców kraju. Armia zapatystowska jednak relatywnie szybko odeszła od konwencjonalnych działań zbrojnych na rzecz walki dyskursywnej/komunikacyjnej, określanej mianem „wojny sieciowej”. Poprzez to przesunięcie partyzanci zamierzali wpłynąć na kontekst polityczny oraz zmaksymalizować swoje szanse polityczne na osiągnięcie zakładanych celów. Głównym problemem niniejszego artykułu pozostaje „wojna sieciowa”; wpływ i znaczenie zapatystowskich dyskursów; rola Internetu w ich rozpowszechnianiu; a także wsparcie oraz zaangażowanie wielu aktorów zbiorowych z całego świata w analizowanym konflikcie.

Discursive struggles about migration: A commentary

Discursive struggles about migration: A commentary