More of the Same? A Dual Case Study Approach to Examining Change Momentum in the Public Sector

Despite the significant amount of change experienced by the public sector, there has been relatively limited empirical examination of how change agendas affect public sector employees in Australia. This article presents a comparative analysis of two Australian public sector organisations that implemented the same positive work change agenda, but experienced very different outcomes. Using a critical realist approach, we draw on a mix of qualitative techniques to suggest that textbook notions of ‘successful change’, which are often derived from large private sector expectations, may fail to capture the complex nature of how public sector change initiatives may unfold. In particular, we demonstrate how political, temporal, contextual, and process factors interact to shift change momentum. Illustrative examples are provided throughout and the findings are discussed in terms of their implications for theory building, for change facilitation, and for future research.     

Social media as semiotic technology and social practice: the case of ResearchGate’s design and its potential to transform social practice

ABSTRACT

This article addresses the need for critical approaches to social media by bridging the focus on language and other semiotic resources that characterises discourse studies with the broader perspective on social media as social, cultural, economic and technological constructs that dominates media and cultural studies. Specifically, we propose a model for analysing how social media as semiotic technologies, that is, technologies designed to enable and constrain meaning-making, may transform social practices. By incorporating Van Leeuwen’s [2008. Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Analysis. London: Oxford University Press] framework for the critical analysis of discourse and social practice, the model extends the social semiotic approach developed in recent critical multimodal studies of software such as PowerPoint to social media, which function primarily to provide platforms for and commodify social practices, rather than to offer rich arrays of semiotic resources for creating multimodal texts and artefacts. Using the academic social network site ResearchGate and the practice of research peer review, we illustrate the model’s capacity to account for the ways the design of social media platforms – through the semiotic resources they make available and the ways these are presented – enables and constrains their users’ ability to perform key social practices and has the potential to transform these practices.     

Crises and critical junctures in authoritarian regimes: addressing uprisings’ temporalities and discontinuities

Abstract

In this article, we aim at sharpening common understandings of the notion of political crisis to better explain the trajectories of authoritarian transformations during popular uprisings. We make three major claims. First, we propose a definition of crisis as brief moments of institutional fluidity and openness in which a process can take different directions. We delineate the crisis concept from the concept of critical junctures and outline how our approach contributes to the methodological debate on ‘near misses’. Second, we indicate how the de-institutionalisation processes leading up to a crisis are to be analytically distinguished from within-crisis moments. We argue in favour of a discontinuity approach that takes into account the different temporalities of gradual lead-up processes and rapid within-crisis dynamics. Finally, we illustrate our theoretical and analytical reasoning with concrete cases from the authoritarian crises of the Arab uprisings, whilst suggesting that our argument can travel to other areas of research in which crisis narratives have gained prominence.     

The Unidad Popular Process as Represented through Siglo XXI Publishers: Between Local Reception and the Construction of a Global Event

This article deals with the role played by books and publishing houses in the representations and circulation of ideas relating to the Chilean Unidad Popular process (1970–1973). Due to its transnational nature, Siglo XXI stands out as a privileged object of analysis. This publishing house was founded by Orfila Reynal in Mexico in 1965, and opened a branch in Buenos Aires in 1971. Amidst political and cultural radicalisation, Siglo XXI Argentina factored in the local reception of ideas about the Chilean road to socialism, and its shaping into a global event.     

Racial and ethnic differences in the consequences of school suspension for arrest

A growing body of literature has demonstrated that when schools suspend students, the suspension acts not as a deterrent but as an amplifier of future punishment. Labeling theory has emerged as the predominant explanation for this phenomenon, suggesting that the symbolic label conferred along with a suspension shapes how other people perceive and respond to labeled students. Few studies, however, have attended to racial/ethnic differences in this process even though critical race theory suggests the consequences of suspension likely differ across racial/ethnic groups due to prevailing racial/ethnic stereotypes. This study uses six waves of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1997 (N = 8,634) to examine how the relationship between suspension and subsequent arrest differs for White, Black, and Hispanic students. Using a series of within-person analyses that control for time-stable personal characteristics, this study finds that suspension amplifies Black and Hispanic students’ risk of arrest relative to that of White students. White students’ risk of arrest was not amplified by suspension and, in some models, was diminished. This study's findings underscore the importance of understanding the labeling process as different by race/ethnicity and indicate that suspension is particularly harmful for Black and Hispanic relative to White students.     

Habermas and the Holy Grail of reason: The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity between theatre and theory

A critical discourse analysis of The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity demonstrates that Habermas's discourse on modernity is theoretische Fiktion (a term Freud used to describe a given theory for which no evidence can be found and no arguments validated). Theatrical narrative strategies from drama are identified that not only organise the logic of the text, but also position readers. The choice of mise en scene—the Oedipal cross‐roads where older and younger protagonists meet in conflict—is seen to position readers as mere spectators. The choice of the narrative trope of the romance of lost opportunity (the road open but not taken) is not merely illustrative, but necessary for the claim that Habermas has redeemed the enlightenment project.

The paper critiques Habermas's theorising on discourse ethics because it distinguishes categories of discourse into scientific/analytical, moral/interpretive and aesthetic/expressive, which operate in three different spheres of value. In particular, it challenges the notion of an “inner logics” for what, in Habermas's stable of discourses, he labels the scientific/analytical. Readers of The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, the paper demonstrates, are not so much pulled along by the force of the better argument, but seduced by that unbridled beast: the aesthetic/expressive.     

The scent of a green carnation: A review of the queer year

The “Blitz spirit” is a popular story about the British public during the Second World War, uniting together with defiance and resilience to overcome the threat of invasion from Nazi Germany. Previous work has revised this wartime story as a propagandistic construction of national identity and popular memory. Therefore, this paper reviews the Blitz spirit as a myth. A critical discourse analysis (CDA) then examines how this myth was retold in British newspapers after the July 7th bombings in London. I examine how this myth was constructed and the ideological role it played after the attacks. Similar to previous revisions of the Blitz myth from 1940, I argue that social and political complexities after July 7th were often suppressed by messages that sought to evoke a sense of “Britishness” defined by a previous generation. Whilst the July 7th bombings were not a case of traditional warfare or attacks carried out by a foreign force, I argue that wartime analogies often supported military responses in the war on terror and evoked a foreign threat.     

Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Critical Theory: A New Synthesis

ABSTRACT

Critical Theory and contemporary psychoanalytic perspectives share many compatibilities in offering a constructive critique of society. Psychoanalysis teaches us that whatever values and ideals societies adopt, they are always mediated through unconscious psychic processes that condition the collective in both positive and negative ways, and in terms of relations of recognition and patterns of social justice. Contemporary critical theory may benefit from engaging post-classical and current trends in psychoanalytic thought that have direct bearing on the ways we conceive of and observe how individuals operate within social collectives. In particular, Axel Honneth relies on psychoanalytic sources that are dated. Critical theory would profit from engaging post-object relations schools such as self psychology, analytical psychology, psychoanalytic intersubjectivity theory, relationality, and contemporary attachment theory that are more nuanced yet can supplement Winnicottian perspectives. Implications for contemporary theory need to reflect upon how the psychosocial matrix of self and society both facilitate and hinder optimal social arrangements and fabrics of justice as it takes up the question of normativity. It is within this context that I hope to introduce contemporary psychoanalytic paradigms that move beyond classical models yet complement redirecting shifts in emphasis both psychoanalysis and Critical Theory attempt to accomplish. I suggest that an applied psychoanalytic explication on social phenomenology can expand the interpretive depth and breadth of human relations and open up a permissible space for interdisciplinary discourse. Here new vistas emerge for a proposed synthesis between the two schools of thought.