Hegemonic Discourse Research Articles

Is making alternative? Rethinking development in Germany’s makerspaces

This paper explores the ideological backgrounds, normative motivations, and the degrees of alterity among makerspaces in Germany. It does so by connecting the question of alterity to discussions on development, and exploring to what extent and in which ways makerspaces aim to challenge the hegemony of traditional growth-oriented development. The study engages with a broad literature to conceptualize development as a hegemonic discourse and present main lines of thought that aim to challenge it. In parallel, it presents the history and diverse trajectories of makerspaces and the makers’ movement in Germany and beyond, rendering the question of their ideological backgrounds and their level of alterity as open. Empirically, the work engages with the Verbund Offener Werkstätten (Association for Open Workshops) and analyzes the content and language by which makerspaces – members of the association – describe themselves in their digital communication. Finally, the study proposes a new categorization for makerspaces – that can be generalized to other alternative spaces – regarding their level of alterity and degree of reproduction or opposition to the hegemonic views, values, and norms of growth-driven development. Through the engagement of diverse literature and analysis of the aforementioned digital texts, this paper offers important insights regarding: a) makerspaces’ alterity in relation to their typology and geographical location; b) the importance of analyzing the discursive practices of alternative economic and political spaces; and c) the transformative potential of alternative spaces in Germany and beyond.

Exploring the foundations of Islamic moral economy: a return to substantive morality

Purpose This paper aims to explore the general flaws in the theorization of Islamic economics, particularly its failure to incorporate substantive morality into its framework. Since a considerable number of Islamic economic studies remain within the bounds of instrumental morality, this paper seeks to propose an alternative understanding of Islamic economics by emphasizing the essential role of Islamic moral economy (IME) through substantive morality. Design/methodology/approach The study critically examines the theorization of Islamic economics through a discursive methodology. The adopted method and strategy allow for the discursive evaluation of conceptual developments within the field of modern Islamic economics. It proposes an authentic definition of IME by outlining its paradigmatic framework of political economy, value system, axiomatic approach and operational principles. Findings Islamic economics has been theorized in a reactive and reflexive manner, aiming to provide an alternative to the neoclassical hegemonic discourse. However, it has largely neglected its inherent moral dimension, focusing instead on instrumental morality and failed to embed substantive morality into its system. By introducing an alternative reading of Islamic economics, this study presents IME as a distinct economic model that centers substantive morality in its theorization. Originality/value This paper contributes to the existing literature by offering a novel perspective on Islamic economics that challenges the prevalent instrumental approach and emphasizes the importance of substantive morality. It provides a comprehensive framework for understanding IME as a distinct economic model, thereby enriching the discourse on Islamic economics with an authentic and morally grounded paradigm.

Enabling counter-colonial, ecologically sustaining education potentialities: A perspective from Aotearoa (New Zealand)

This paper considers ‘democracy’ with reference to education in the (neo)colonial context of Aotearoa (New Zealand). It discusses impacts of the western project of colonisation, arguing for the need to counter damaging hegemonic discourses such as white supremacy and racism that have underpinned and fuelled its operation. It identifies neoliberalism as a key contributor to the current erosion of democracies and the climate and ecological crises. It posits that education is a prime site for changing this narrative via pathways for restoration. It highlights the potential of early childhood education for offering democratising, ecologically sustaining practices by fostering dispositions of care, concern, empathy and kaitiakitanga. 1

Unanticipated outcomes of an occupational rehabilitation group on low-SES ultra-Orthodox women’s self-concept

ABSTRACT This longitudinal ethnographic study examines the development of the occupational self-concept of low socioeconomic status ultra-Orthodox women participating in a government-sponsored program to promote integration into the workforce. We followed participants for 18 months to learn about their experience and its effects, using group observations, in-depth interviews, and document analysis. The findings revealed central elements of the intercultural encounter of ultra-Orthodox women with a neoliberal organization. A year after the program’s conclusion, the participants unexpectedly underwent occupational regression, intensifying their commitment to their roles in the home arena rather than achieving the declared goal of occupational integration. The process led the women to embrace a self-concept resonating with the neoliberal characteristics presented in the program but applying it in the home and not the occupational space. This article suggests that neoliberal discourse, with its Western, secular, and class origins, left participants with a self-concept incompatible with the collective self characterizing their culture. We emphasize the importance of incorporating culturally sensitive practices for occupational rehabilitation which consider the potential conflict between the hegemonic discourse (represented by the organizations) and the program participants (minority groups from diverse cultural backgrounds).

Uncle, Look at This!

Abstract This article considers the epistemic value of Iraqi first-person documentaries of family life, or domestic ethnographies, during the Iraq War (2003–2011). The article analyses Life After the Fall (Abid 2008) and Homeland: Iraq Year Zero (Fahdel 2015), two documentaries about the everyday life of the videomakers’ family members in the advent of the US-led 2003 invasion and shortly after the occupation. The article examines how Iraqi domestic ethnographies dispute and complement dominant (Western) media, filmic and historical discourses of the conflict. I argue that these videos provide a nuanced understanding of the complex social, cultural and historical dynamics of this period, exceeding essentialisms and hegemonic discourses of violence, terror and victimhood. In addition, I demonstrate how this approach facilitates the participation of historically marginalized voices of young female family members, particularly in the representation of the conflict, and situates otherwise unusual discussions around Iraqi women’s rights and gender issues at the core of everyday life in post-invasion Iraq.

Displays of Expertise: Constructing Authority in Men’s Fashion Advice Videos

Fashion and style are largely the products of discursive fields where individuals with varying degrees of power can dictate trends and “proper” manners of dressing. As with other fields, bloggers and influencers have increasingly challenged the traditional fashion media’s expertise. This paper seeks to explore how influencers who give male fashion advice construct and deploy their perceived expertise. To do so, this paper uses a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis to examine videos posted to TikTok and Instagram Reels by nine men’s fashion advice influencers. By comparing videos by multiple influencers, the paper recognizes the repeated signs and discourses which demonstrate expertise in fashion but also reproduce hegemonic discourses.

Playing the scales: A strategy adopted by resistance coalitions for public value creation

Local actors can defend public value by mobilizing resistance coalitions against threats from higher spatial scales. Drawing on existing scholarship on resistance movements and public value creation, this paper proposes a theoretical framework for understanding how local actors can protect public value from threats of rescaling driven solely by hegemonic discourses and presents a strategy that we call “playing the scales.” Our case study analyzes a Local Action Group’s resistance to a state-imposed and EU-framed regulation that threatened local forms of value creation on the Croatian peninsula of Pelješac. Employing a longitudinal participatory approach, our findings outline the strategy of playing the scales, which involved three key tactics: gathering relevant knowledge from various scales; crafting an alternative narrative; and leveraging this narrative across scales to reshape the dominant organizational logic. The study contributes to the understanding of public value creation by showing how it can be defended by resistance coalitions that are capable of playing the scales. It also sheds light on alternative dynamics of rescaling that, rather than oppositional resistance to higher scales or attempts to scale up micro-practices can also be driven by trans-scalar alliances that inscribe the interests of local communities into dominant discourses.

‘A Rustling Sound’: Voices of WWII Italian Detainees from The Multilingual Archive of Australia

National archives, libraries, and museums both expose and, directly or indirectly, collude with the military, legal, political, and rhetorical processes of exclusion that tend to obfuscate people’s subjectivities. In this article, official spaces assigned to preserve national memory are placed into dialogue with other archival sites of memory preservation and retrieval of family and community past. By looking at the connections between diverse documents related to Italian-speaking individuals who were prisoners of war and civilian internees in Australia, during World War II, the article investigates how this material can be used to question hegemonic discourses and counters the ‘monolingual paradigm’. Letters, diaries, and memoirs that account captivity and marginalisation during wartime offer cases of polyvocal texts as both creative and privileged sites of speech acts, discursive and material interactions where we can locate spaces of agency, connection and affect.

Decolonising] the Contentious Politics of Seeing: Reading Visual Cultures

Art and imagery consumed globally through digital and social media are increasingly intertwined with everyday life and politics. This article discusses the often contentious politics of seeing art and imagery, and the problematique that surrounds it. It inverts the lens to look at visual cultures by contextualising it within larger cultural politics and examines the process of visual meaning-making in the public sphere. We seek to disrupt disciplinary and methodological boundaries and employ a transdisciplinary approach to deconstructing meaning-making in the public sphere. We focus on how continued hegemonic discourses are problematised in the production and representation of artworks, especially in the context of the Global South, and how these contribute to decolonising visual cultures and knowledge production. We argue that seeing as a conscious act of engagement differs from casual consumption and spectatorship, and an engaged position alters the viewer’s receptivity. We conclude that through participatory engagement with art and an ongoing dialogue a more inclusive public sphere is possible, enabling education and disrupting a multitude of power hierarchies.

Trenzando desde Esmeraldas a Cuenca

The objective of this work is to "braid" the relationship of Ecuadorians with their hair, taking into account intersectionality, that is, triple discrimination by gender, "race" and class. A conception in which the cultural industries play a decisive role, which reproduce the hegemonic discourse, the one promoted by power, in this case at the aesthetic level. We have used ethnography, specifically life history as a research technique. Starting from anthropology, we will analyze the conception of hair that is held from the margins, both on the coast and in the highlands of Ecuador, so interculturality has been key in this research. Hence, through braiding we have connected Esmeraldas, a coastal city, with Cuenca, in the case of the Sierra. The first is because there is a majority black population whose aesthetics in general, and hair in particular, do not correspond to the established canon of beauty, with braiding having great prominence. The same thing happens in Cuenca, where part of the population is of Cañari origin, and men belonging to this ethnic group wear their hair long, tied back in a braid, which does not conform to the conventional aesthetics of the male gender existing in the heteropatriarchal system. Through this study we will establish an intercultural dialogue between both groups, which have historically been discriminated against, so we will also address the role that State policies have played in this regard.

State Hegemony In Global Civil Society: The Articulation Of Indonesia's Ecpat Hegemony In The Process Of Securitization Of Child Sexual Exploitation

The process of securitization of anti-child sexual exploitation norms (anti-ESA) carried out by ECPAT Indonesia relies on two hegemonic discourses, namely the global hegemonic discourse on children's rights and the political discourse on state hegemony. Looking at using the Securitization Theory, this study finds that ECPAT Indonesia disseminates the ESA threat to the local community as a securitization audience but without conducting equivalent socialization. This inequality arises due to the securitization model carried out by ECPAT Indonesia which is imposing through state hegemony instead of accommodating differences in norm structures between global and local communities. This argument is supported by using critical discourse analysis that looks at interviews with ECPAT Indonesia and the press releases they issue. In researching this issue, this study finds that ECPAT Indonesia does design their operations by utilizing the two hegemonies that have been mentioned.

Experiencing ‘Taiwanese’ nationhood in the ambivalent heritage from the Japanese colonial era

ABSTRACT This study discusses how ordinary people experienced and reproduced Taiwanese nationhood in response to the ambivalent heritage of the Japanese colonial era. Heritage serves as a crucial instrument to convey the national imagining; nevertheless, it is unclear how ordinary people could gain a national meaning from the colonial-era heritage of hegemonic discourse. By interconnecting the theoretical ideas of ‘imagined community’ and ‘banal nationalism’, semi-structured interviews were conducted in this study to explore how ordinary people appropriated the colonial-era heritage as the notion of a ‘historic territory’ shared by a ‘national we’. Their discussions revealed intelligence attachments, local characteristics, personal memories, and political statements as scenarios from which they obtained gratification and admiration. The results also revealed that these social narratives extended the official narrative to reshape the colonial-era heritage associated with one particular group and era as the property of all Taiwanese, emphasising the recreation of nationhood through a bottom-up force.

‘Who am I now?’ the lived experiences and identity construction of individuals following bariatric surgery

ABSTRACT Mediatised standards of beauty in contemporary western societies contribute to stigma and discrimination of individuals labelled ‘obese’ by medical professionals. Most people who undergo weight-reduction treatments, including bariatric surgery, choose it due to serious health conditions, often unable to lose weight in any other way. However, they are commonly constructed as ‘cheaters’ and blamed for lacking will and self-control. Cultural beliefs demonising fat and fat people produce the perceptions of an inferior identity, often leading to internalised fatphobia among such individuals. This study investigates the lived experiences of 11 individuals after bariatric surgery using semi-structured interviews analysed via narrative framework. The findings demonstrate paradoxical effects bariatric surgery can have on identity, through a persistent ‘obese’ view of self and body perception challenges, indicating long-lasting harmful effects of symbolic violence these individuals experience due to stigmatisation and medicalisation of fat and highlighting hegemonic discourses inscribing normative views on human bodies.

‘Not that We’re not Hard-Working Ourselves, but Germans are the Model’: mediatising Germans as the national other in the video project Easy Languages

ABSTRACT The present paper focuses on the analysis of four videos which portray the ways British, Italian, French and Greek people talk about Germans as the national other, within the context of a video series project aiming to promote multilingualism and foreign language learning (Easy Languages). Contrary to traditional views on national stereotypes from social psychology, and on cultural categorisations of countries from intercultural communication as universally fixed entities, a Critical Discourse Studies perspective is adopted, which views them instead as hegemonic discourses, which sustain particular power relations with the excuse of ‘cultural’ difference. The analysis discloses that the mediatisation of Germans as the national other aligns with the well-known national stereotypes of competence and warmth, as well as with the widely held cultural categorisations distinguishing monochronic from polychronic countries. Yet, viewed as dynamic discursive resources, it is shown that discussing national matters is a delicate topic, requiring a positive impression management, especially within a context with ‘clear’ intercultural objectives. Moreover, these discourses lead to the neutralisation of politics through culturalisation.

Competing Visions at the EU’s Edge: Liberal vs. Conservative-Christian Notions of Europe in the Ukrainian–Hungarian Borderland

ABSTRACT Across Europe there is a plurality of competing visions on what Europe means, each appealing to identity and bringing along potential (geo)political implications. Identification with such visions are particularly worth investigating along the EU external boundary, some sections of which divide ethno-linguistic and religious communities. This paper is based on interviews with 23 elites in the Ukrainian–Hungarian borderland conducted some weeks before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The Ukrainian responses were marked by an overridingly positive view on Europe, while those of the Hungarians on both sides of the border were overall clearly more skeptical, with attitudes strongly overlapping with current hegemonic discourses on the EU in Hungary. The paper points to the salience of ethnic identities and the resonance of narratives in Budapest and Kyiv among these borderland communities. It also draws out tensions between the benefits of EU membership and a Hungarian national identity increasingly framed in opposition to the Union.

Describing Otherness in Captives’ Autobiographies in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries

The essay explores the description of Otherness in the autobiographies of three former Christian captives from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In these texts, authors described their experiences in the Islamic societies where they were enslaved, offering insights into Islamic geography and culture. However, these descriptions were also influenced by prevailing ideas and the authors’ need to align their narratives with the hegemonic discourse, thereby perpetuating and crafting biased depictions of the Other. Understanding the motivations that guided the construction of memory in these autobiographies is crucial for a comprehensive grasp of their objectives. These objectives are closely intertwined with the authors’ experiences in Islamic societies and their aspirations for reintegration into Christian ones, where they produced their writings after escaping captivity.

Cyberfeminist resistance against hegemonic and anti-feminist discourses: the case of Kuwait

ABSTRACT How do Kuwaiti cyberfeminists resist hegemonic and anti-feminist discourses? This article seeks to answer this question by exploring the contestation between Kuwaiti feminists and their Islamist opponents on Twitter. Viewing cyberfeminism as constructive resistance, I argue that feminism is practiced and performed online by a variety of women actors who do not necessarily self-identify as feminists or activists, constructively and continuously producing new discourses and subjectivities, establishing a salient embodied feminist presence that can trigger an anti-feminist counter-mobilization. In a Twitter Space hosted by the Kuwaiti Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs on December 23, 2021, an anti-feminist lecture portrayed Kuwaiti feminists as alienated from religion and society while downplaying the extent of violence against women in the country. In response, Kuwaiti cyberfeminists attempted to reclaim feminism by placing it within local and national frames using a Twitter hashtag. Resorting to a reverse discourse strategy had some shortcomings, including reinforcing hegemonic discourses and the binary of “us” (feminists) versus “them” (Islamists), which may have been an inevitable outcome of an antagonistic narrative. This article adds to the existing literature on cyberfeminism by exploring an understudied domain and offering significant insights into feminists’ online resistance in socially conservative contexts.

Queer immigrants’ performative identity and cultural marginality in the context of queering ESL education

Abstract This qualitative study analyzes three gay Chinese immigrants’ experiences and perspectives regarding English hegemony, internalized oppression, and sexual identity using language ideology, social positioning, and performativity. The findings show that speaking English still determines one’s proximity to American culture, and language ideology affects attitudes towards one’s own culture and language. In particular, the study demonstrates a triple marginalization in which participants are more or less marginalized because their inherited American values clash with their marginality, and at the same time, because of their negative experiences with local gay communities and rejection from their own culture, they feel alienated, displaced, and immobile as a result. Additionally, English learning and interacting with LGBTQ content contribute to their language acquisition, sexual identity transformation, and activism development. Queering ESL education is needed because English learners inherit oppressive English ideologies and show discrimination towards other marginalized groups. As a gateway to American society and cultures, ESL classes present opportunities to raise awareness and challenge hegemonic discourse. Furthermore, ESL classrooms can also be powerful places for queer students whose cultures provide little or no validation of their sexuality to cultivate their cultural competence and affirm their place within society.

Bread-and-Butter Politics: Arrested Liberalization and Hegemonic Materialism in Singapore

ABSTRACT Singapore has displayed a continued ability to confound the assumed symbiotic relationships between democratization, economic growth, and liberalism. This paper historicizes the development, use, and understanding of a popular idiom frequently employed in Singaporean electoral discourse – “bread-and-butter” – to explore the relationship between hegemonic discourses, social attitudes, and political contestation in Singapore. Doing so reveals a complex pattern of the People’s Action Party’s (PAP) ideological-discursive legwork: bread-and-butter issues are discursively constituted around a set of core economic issues and demarcated as the key political concerns of voters, while calls for more liberal or progressive changes in society are bracketed within the sphere of postmaterialist values. By seeking to maintain the hegemonic notion of the party as the guarantor of basic material goods, PAP sets the terms of competition in electoral politics to issues that are its perceived strengths. The party’s continued ability to provide economic goods contributes to its political success, stalling the growth of liberalization and a more competitive political landscape in Singapore. Bread-and-butter discourse therefore reflects and reproduces the preeminence of materialism in Singapore’s politics.

Voicing Discursive Binaries: A Postcolonial Study of Gordimer’s Short Stories

Massive decolonization occurred in the 21st century. The natives and the diaspora attempted to portray the other side of the image structured by the colonial hegemonic discourse. Gordimer has written against apartheid and raised her voice to articulate the realistic picture of the marginalization faced by the suppressed South Africans in the form of racial and social inequality. She incorporates discourse to challenge the existing colonial discourse and the explicit binaries. This study attempts to investigate the challenges she has put against the existing discursive binaries in her short stories. The concepts of colonial discourse and counter-discourse given by Edward Said and Helen Tiffin serve as a framework to analyze the data collected from the selected text. The findings reveal that Gordimer has employed different techniques of narration and characterization to redress the negative image of the oppressed others in the colonial discourse through binaries. She employs various textual strategies to expose the stereotypical binaries through counter-discursive practices to dismantle the colonial assumptions from the perspective of the natives.