The Politics of Technology Decline: Discursive Struggles over Coal Phase‐Out in the UK

The decline of carbon intensive technologies is a key element in the ongoing energy transition and our attempts to tackle climate change. At the same time, our understanding of technology decline and of the associated policies and politics is still limited. This paper builds on the sustainability transitions perspective, a novel approach to analyze socio‐technical transformation, including the complex interplay of policy and technology change. We study the decline of coal‐fired power generation in the United Kingdom from 2000 to 2017 by analyzing the discourse in The Guardian. We find scientists and environmental NGOs criticizing coal for climate and health reasons. Government and incumbent businesses tried to re‐legitimate coal but eventually, their resistance collapsed and coal was almost completely abandoned in just a few years. Particularly devastating for coal were failed promises around carbon capture and storage, rapid diffusion of wind energy, and pressure from various policies. This study contributes to better understanding the contested nature of decline, and the interplay of discursive struggles, technology change, and public policy in sustainability transitions.     

发达国家在国际话语权建设方面的主要经验

国际话语权的争夺是当今大国博弈的重要方面。中国正在走近世界舞台的中央,面对的是发达国家在国际话语权上的优势。中国要增强自己的国际话语权需要一个过程,在这一进程中,研究和借鉴别国成功的经验十分重要。本文研究和总结了发达国家在国际话语权建设方面的主要经验,认为谋求国际话语权需要以国家实力为基础,但有实力并不就意味着有话语权,还需要注重话语的内容能被国际社会接受,需要通过有效的手段传播这些话语,更需要把舆论性话语转变成制度性话语。     

The politics of response to terror: the reshaping of community and immunity in the aftermath of 7 July 2005 London bombings

This article explores the politics of response to the 7 July 2005 London bombings, by analysing UK counter-terrorism institutional campaigns in the three years following the attack. By drawing on the interpretive category of community/immunity, the semiotic analysis of counter-terrorism campaigns aims to describe their representation of the political community and citizen in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks. The article argues that the counter-terrorism discourse relies on two contrasting tendencies: on the one hand, the unifying force that brings people together in the name of common values; and on the other, the necessity to weaken communitarian bonds in order to allow the citizen to control and check-up on others, reporting “anything suspicious” to authorities. In these texts, the figure of the citizen surveillant clearly emerges. Surveillance activities are shaped around the representation of the terrorist event, from the image of the terrorist in normal everyday life to the actual attacks. Paradoxically this brings about a mimicry effect. The surveillance action carried out by the citizen and the imagined actions of the preparation of a terrorist attack partially overlap in the way they are described and visually represented.     

A multimodal discourse analytic approach to the articulation of Martini’s “desire” positioning in filmic product placement

Product placement constitutes an amply used tactic in a marketer’s Integrated Marketing Communications roster. Its merits in circumventing negative attitudes to advertising and in integrating brand values in sociocultural narratives in TV and cinematic filmic discourses have been repeatedly stressed. However, little attention has been placed thus far in the idiosyncratic mode that is scrutinized in this paper, that is product placement by leveraging uncertainty, surprise, postponement and displacement as defining characteristics of the discourse of desire. The analysis of the discourse of desire that unravels in a flirting sequence from the blockbuster movie “Hitch” demonstrates that although the concerned brand (Martini) is minimally visible in the analyzed scene, yet it attains to appropriate as part of its core DNA in “stealth” mode the above characteristics of desire by demarcating the cultural field of flirtation. The offered cultural analytic addresses this idiosyncratic product placement mode by drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis and multimodal discourse analysis.     

Mobilization in the European Public Sphere: The Struggle Over Genetically Modified Organisms

The objective of this study is to investigate the extent to which supporters and opponents at the European Union (EU) level strive to mobilize the public with regard the issue of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). To this end, it addresses two research questions: First, to which concepts do GMO opponents and supporters refer when seeking to mobilize the public? Second, do GMO opponents and supporters differ in the coherence of the concepts they use to attain public mobilization? The empirical findings show that the pro‐GMO coalition is composed of biotechnology companies as well as representatives of Argentina, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the World Trade Organization. The anti‐GMO coalition consists of environmental nongovernmental organizations and representatives from most of the EU member states. Altogether, the anti‐GMO coalition has been more coherent in the concepts they invoke in the last few years.     

Yes,no, maybe: an analysis of journalists’ views about political party membership in South Africa

This article reports on an analysis of South African journalists’ views on independence from political parties at a time when the journalist fraternity appeared to be split in two (with nuances in between): those who appeared to support the nationalistic, patriotic project of sunshine journalism to focus on the “positives” and enhance the image of the country as espoused by the ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), and those who attempted to abide by codes of ethics according to the Press Council of South Africa (PCSA). The PCSA stipulates that belonging to a political party constitutes a conflict of interests, and recommends distance from political parties, with the liberal normative view of watchdog journalism and holding the powerful to account. The analysis combined and integrated a few methods to reach conclusions about the master signifier in the discourse of journalists. It used a survey conducted with journalists in 2015 for quantitative and qualitative analysis, and deployed Zizek’s use of the concepts of master and floating signifiers to offer some critical reflections about journalists’ relationships to political parties. It found that the majority of journalists felt that their credibility would be compromised if they belonged to a political party, but quite a large section felt that journalists had biases anyway, so what was the problem?     

The myopic Foucauldian gaze: discourse,knowledge and the authoritarian peace

ABSTRACT

The discourse of liberal peacebuilding has often been characterized by critics as a hegemonic discourse, in which power and knowledge are co-constitutive. Influenced by the work of Michel Foucault, an important strand of the literature has demonstrated how epistemic communities have produced knowledge that supports this discourse, while marginalizing other, contrary voices. A ‘local turn’ has sought to uncover what Foucault termed ‘subjugated knowledges’, peripheral voices that were seen as potentially contributing to a more emancipatory peace. This article, in contrast, argues that the explicit and implicit Foucauldian framing of discourse and knowledge is no longer adequate to conceptualize the contested nature of peace and conflict in a rapidly changing international system. In a period of significant geopolitical shifts away from a Western-centric international order, post-Foucauldian discourse theories offer a more productive analytical perspective that makes visible the multiple, competing discourses that attempt to achieve closure in defining meanings of peace and conflict. A theoretical framework that emphasizes discursive contestation rather than unitary domination allows serious consideration of alternative conceptualizations of peacemaking. In particular, theoretical frameworks that highlight contestation make visible an authoritarian, illiberal approach to managing conflict that challenges both liberal and emancipatory conceptualizations of peace and conflict, but is occluded in the current debate over post-liberal peace.     

‘No girl wants to be called a slut!’: women,heterosexual casual sex and the sexual double standard

Recent shifts in the western cultural landscape mean that practices such as casual sex are contradictory terrains for women. Although permissive and liberal discourses construct women’s casual sex as acceptable, and even desirable, traditional discourses and a sexual double standard, do not. This article examines 15 young women’s negotiation of the sexual double standard in their talk of heterosexual casual sex. Interviews were analysed using thematic analysis, with borrowed insights from discourse analysis, within a constructionist framework. All 15 women in this study gave accounts of an agentic and desiring sexuality, yet talked about casual sex and a sexual reputation in contradictory and contested ways. Three main themes were identified: the (un)acceptability of casual sex, a sexual reputation is what other girls have, and the making of a slut. Although an enduring sexual double standard was identified, all participants challenged its relevance and appropriateness. However, a sexual double standard also seeped into women’s accounts when talking about other women and the threat of garnering a negative sexual reputation was linked to women’s silencing of their own casual sex experiences. This work supports the continued need to dismantle un/changing codes of gendered heterosexuality.     

The rough guide to love: romance,history and sexualization in gendered relationship advice

Sexualization is changing the way we think about romantic love. According to recent research, young people are increasingly confronted by narrowing ideals of sexual attractiveness making romantic intimacy increasingly difficult forcing a choice between ‘raunch or romance’. This article investigates the alleged distinction between romance and sexualization, in the process challenging claims that the current crisis of sexualization is a product of societal change in late modernity. Responding to a call to consider sexualization from a hitherto neglected historical perspective, the paper employs critical discourse analysis to identify the formation of gendered meanings and practices in How the Good Wife Taught Her Daughter, a late medieval advice text for young women, and twenty-first-century advice from the MyBliss website. Focusing on sexualized clothing, contact with others, reputation and social status, the paper argues that in both medieval and modern advice, discourses of romantic love and sexualization are mutually dependent. In addition, similarities between medieval and modern advice reveal that our current sexualization crisis is not solely a product of modern life, but is part of a longer pattern of gender normativity and inequality.     

Media discourse and pathos: sketching a critical and integrationist approach – Greek and French headlines before the Greek referendum of 2015

This paper examines media discourse and emotions in discourse (pathos) during the week before the Greek Referendum of 2015. Drawing on the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis, we study the interrelation between macro-level (dominant) values and views, and the micro-level of media positioning, as retrieved from newspaper headlines. The headlines come from three Greek and two French newspapers of differing political, economic, and ideological standpoints. Focusing on the micro-level, we sketch an integrationist framework of analysis: We conduct a systemic functional analysis to scrutinize the transitivity structures of headlines, and an analysis of pathos in order to track constructed emotions. Among our main findings is that the newspapers, despite their different positionings and interests, converge on a dense discursive and emotional construction that favours the dominant values of a free market and the doctrine of austerity.