Discourse Analysis: varieties and methods

This paper presents and analyses six key approaches to discourse analysis, including political discourse theory, rhetorical political analysis, the discourse historical approach in critical discourse analysis, interpretive policy analysis, discursive psychology and Q methodology. It highlights differences and similarities between the approaches along three distinctive dimensions, namely, ontology, focus and purpose. Our analysis reveals the difficulty of arriving at a fundamental matrix of dimensions which would satisfactorily allow one to organize all approaches in a coherent theoretical framework. However, it does not preclude various theoretical articulations between the different approaches, provided one takes a problem-driven approach to social science as one?s starting-point

'Cette autre nécessité essentielle: 'l'urbanisation': electrification and the Urbanisation of the Nebular City

The advent of modern utility systems together with improved transport infrastructures and information technologies introduced new spatial arrangements and temporalities in the territory. In time, these reveal a notion of urbanisation that does not only takes place in or directly adjacent to the traditional (territorially bounded) city, but in which co-evolving processes lead to differentiated territorial arrangements. Belgium’s distributed urban condition – the ‘nebular city’ – emerged out of the interplay of such multiple territorial arrangements. Often, it is explained by a historical roots in policies of industrial dispersal, while historical efforts to actively accommodate and organise the territory from the broader perspective of urbanisation are assigned a secondary role only. This article, however, takes a close look at two projects from the 1930’s that took the emerging condition of dispersal as their starting point and which both reflect on the role of urbanisation in the reproduction of the conditions in which industrialisation, among other processes of modernisation, can take place. In particular aspects surrounding the Belgian electrification are examined. Although not one of their main drivers, the electrification is both intertwined with the rise of industrial production and the development of an urban modern lifestyle. Only in the 1930’s, however, Belgian spatial planners started to explore issues concerning the distribution of electricity and its spatial and economic consequences. Both projects are embedded within the international debate on the functional city and present Belgium as a particular case. They show the general delay and mismatch between the process of industrialisation and urbanisation because of the nation’s chosen development path, both in spatial and temporal terms

Institutional logics, blended and suspended

This paper examines how a new institution, a code of conduct, arises and develops over time. It shows how the process of debate airs competing logics, questions and fails to question assumptions taken for granted, and yet achieves a large degree of legitimacy without having resolved certain core issues. The UK code of corporate governance has been emulated around the world as a model of good practice. By examining in detail one aspect of the debate – the issue over unitary or two-tier boards – the paper shows how the contest of logics leads not just to new, blended or hybrid logics, but also to suspended logics. The process of consultation brings together actors from differing organizational fields and institutional orders, offering an opportunity to create a new field in a different order, with specific lessons for the practice of corporate governance and general lessons for institution-building