Framing justice in struggles over cultural heritage: the case of Black Pete in the ‘postcolonial’ Netherlands

Anchored in Nancy Fraser’s theorizing of justice, the current study seeks to scrutinise the entwinement of contemporary struggles over justice with controversies over the meaning and the role of heritage. Through a discourse-analytic exploration of Dutch political debates about the racialised figure of Black Pete, the study demonstrates how a debate over heritage might encapsulate a struggle over economic, cultural and political justice, and in particular the right to (re-)define social relations and to (co-)determine societal norms and values. Four visions/discourses of justice are identified and classified along two distinctive axes – one related to the definition of whose moral reasoning and well-being is prioritised in controversies over the meaning and role of heritage (majority vs. minority); and the other pertaining to the delineation of how a specific vision of justice and imagined common good is to be realised (through reconciliation vs. struggle)

Introduction

Introduction to the volum

Semiotic resources and argumentative strategies in tweets about political TV shows in Chile

The main aim of this research is to explore the argumentative and semiotic resources used in tweets related to political TV shows in Chile in 2016. To achieve this, I carried out a qualitative investigation that incorporates principles from critical discourse studies (Wodak & Meyer, 2016) for the analysis of the resources employed by Twitter users to present their political views in this type of digital media. Previous studies in political discourse and social media (KhosraviNik & Unger, 2016; KhosraviNik & Zia, 2014), and specifically the discourse-historical approach (Reisigl & Wodak, 2016), have proved to be particularly useful to explore the argumentative strategies and semiotic resources involved in the discourse on political issues in different media. This research focuses on tweets about five Chilean political TV shows which encourage their audiences to extend the debate in a social media environment, showing hashtags and tweets. The data set comprises 39,684 hashtagged tweets from three months at the beginning, middle and end of the televised season. In the first stage of this research, I identify topics and diverse semiotic features in the whole data set. Among the topics identified in the data collection, those related to ethical concerns are the most frequent, alongside tweets related to public figures and institutions. The semiotic resources found in the data set were classified into overarching semiotic categories of verbal, visual and hypertextual. In the second stage, I analysed the interaction patterns present in the data and argumentative resources in a sample of tweets. To describe interaction patterns, I draw on Goffman’s (1981) model of interaction. I found that users addressed a wide variety of actors, not only among the participants of online or televised debates, but across the public sphere. The communication among these diverse actors blurred the boundaries between and within encounters, creating a new type of interaction that I called hybrid play. Regarding the diverse argumentative strategies identified in the sample, fallacies, including ad hominem, ad verecundiam, hasty generalization and straw man, were found. The other main discursive strategies analysed were topoi. There were several realizations of the topoi of burden and responsibility, related to issues of political contingency and users’ claims for action. Also present were topoi of urgency, comparison, decency, justice, human rights and history. Despite the claims that social media can allow manifestations of hostility or uncivil behaviour in relation to politics, the analysis showed that digitally mediated debates related to television shows in the Chilean context can be seen as an expansion of the public sphere in which users can participate to different degrees in political debates, criticizing the status quo and proposing their own political agendas, thereby potentially generating new spaces for political deliberation

Aproximación argumentativa al “framing”: enmarcado, deliberación y acción en un conflicto ambiental

This paper proposes a new theorization of the concept of “framing”, in which argumentation has a central role. When decision-making is involved, to frame an issue is to offer the audience a salient and thus potentially overriding premise in a deliberative process that can ground decision and action. The analysis focuses on the Roşia Montană case, a conflict over policy that developed over the years into an environmental social movement and, in September 2013, culminated in the most significant public protests in Romania since the 1989 Revolution. Starting from Entman’s understanding of framing as “selection and salience”, several framing strategies are identified and discussed, illustrating three main mechanisms. The way in which “selection and salience” operates via a range of argument schemes in a deliberative, decision-making process, in order to produce framing effects (including, possibly, collective mobilization) is illustrated with examples from the 2013 campaign and protests (slogans, websites, blogs and newspaper articles).El presente artículo propone una nueva teorización del concepto de framing o marco, en el cual la argumentación cumple un papel fundamental. Cuando hablamos de tomar decisiones, enmarcar un asunto implica ofrecer a la audiencia una premisa destacada y, por ende, posiblemente primordial en un proceso deliberativo que permite fundamentar tanta la decisión como la acción. El análisis se centra en el caso de Roşia Montană, una controversia sobre políticas públicas que, con el correr de los años, se transformó en un movimiento socioambiental y que, en el mes de septiembre de 2013, culminó en las protestas más importantes que se vivieron en Rumania desde la Revolución de 1989. Partiendo del concepto de framing que Entman entiende como “selección y énfasis”, se identifican y comentan varias estrategias de enmarcado que ilustran tres mecanismos principales. La manera en que operan la “selección y el énfasis” a través de una serie de esquemas de argumentos dentro de un proceso de decisión deliberativo para producir efectos de enmarcado (incluida, posiblemente, la movilización colectiva) se ilustra con ejemplos de la campaña y las protestas de 2013 (eslóganes, sitios web, blogs y notas periodísticas)

Weaving webs of insecurity: fear, weakness and power in the post-Soviet South Caucasus

This thesis' central aim is the application of a Wendtian-constructivist expansion of Regional Security Complex Theory (RSCT) on a specific case study: the South Caucasus. To that effect, three concepts of RSCT – amity/enmity, state incoherence, and great power penetration – are expanded and developed within the broader above-mentioned ontological-epistemological framework. Amity-enmity is elaborated into an integrated spectrum founded on varying ideational patterns of securitisation alongside objective characteristics, and encompassing conflict formations, security regimes and security communities. States are conceptualised as ideational-institutional-material "providers of security"; their incoherence is characterised over three tiers and two dimensions, leading to a distinction between vertical and horizontal inherent weakness, ostensible instability and failure. Great power penetration is dissected into its objective, subjective and intersubjective elements, resulting in a 1+3+1 typology of its recurring patterns: unipolar, multipolar-cooperative and multipolar-competitive, bounded by hegemony and disengagement. After the specification of a methodology incorporating both objective macro- and interpretive micro-perspectives, two working hypotheses are specified. Firstly, that state incoherence engenders high levels of regional enmity, and, secondly, that patterns of great power penetration primarily affect transitions of regional amity/enmity between conflict formations and security regimes. The framework is subsequently used to triangulate these hypotheses through an application of the theoretical framework on the post-Soviet Southern Caucasus. An initial macro-overview is subsequently provided of the Southern Caucasus as a regional security complex; the three expanded concepts are consequently investigated, in turn, from the discursive micro-perspective. The South Caucasus is categorised into a "revisionist conflict formation", the nature of its states' incoherence is characterised, and existing patterns of great power penetration are identified as competitive-multipolar. In the final chapter, the hypotheses are largely confirmed, and various scenarios as to the possible emergence of a regional security regime are investigated

The public sphere according to UK stem cell scientists

In this thesis the concept of social representations is made relevant to the study of the ‘public sphere’ according to scientists. This is elaborated by the re-examination of the notion of a ‘consensual’ and a ‘reified universe’ substantiating a more sociopsychological approach in the study of relevant phenomena. Two processes generate social representations of the public: anchoring and objectification. The empirical study investigates the scientists’ views of the public sphere, in relation to public perceptions, media coverage and the regulation of cloning technology. Elite media coverage of the stem cell debate and conversations with stem cell scientists are systematically analysed with multiple methods. Findings are based on 461 news articles that appeared in Nature and Science between 1997 and 2005 and on interviews with 18 U.K based stem cell researchers conducted between February and October 2005. The analysis compares the debate before and after the ‘stem cell war’ of 2002, and typifies a high tension in representing the public sphere, elaborated in metaphors and prevailing arguments. Central elements of the representation assume a strong disassociation of science from the public sphere; peripheral elements operate with a degree of blurring of those same boundaries, which recognises a common project. This representation, while being expressive of its context of production, constitutes a functional response to it

Re-thinking public reason

This thesis critically examines the concepts of civil discourse and civil disobedience expounded by John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor. I claim that their accounts fail to consider the impacts of epistemic injustices, which lead to the unfair dismissal of the political claims made by marginalized communities in the political realm, and the impacts of social practices of ignorance which render the contestation of social and political injustices extremely difficult. Consequently, I develop an account of civil discourse and civil disobedience inspired by feminist epistemological theory. I claim that this framework is more attuned to inequalities of epistemic status, leading to my argument that civil discourse should be re-thought as a relationship of trust which requires interlocutors to fulfil particular epistemic responsibilities towards each other. I further argue that this re-conceptualization of civil discourse allows us to transcend a dominant dichotomous interpretation of the concept in the current academic literature. This discourse either claims that civility is an essential political practice in the face of deep political and moral disagreement or that civil discourse is simply a means to stifle contentious political struggles and to solidify the political dominance of privileged social individuals, groups and communities. Furthermore, I also claim that civil disobedience should be re-conceived as a political practice which challenges patterns of vested social ignorance regarding oppressive social, economic and political arrangements while also contesting epistemic injustices. I develop this argument by critically appraising the theories of civil disobedience proffered by John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas. Like their theories of public reason, I maintain that they fail to consider the operation of oppressive epistemic norms, thereby severely limiting the insights of their accounts. Consequently, I develop a different set of normative criteria for analysing acts of civil disobedience which adequately considers the impact of oppressive epistemic norms while also proffering an explanation of how civil discourse is reconcilable with coercive political disobedience. Ultimately, therefore, I hope to illustrate that extending feminist epistemological insights into discussions of civil disobedience and civil discourse offers a fruitful way of exploring the broader connection between persuasion and coercion in contemporary liberal democracies

Dionysus against the Crucified: Nietzsche, Sovereignty, and the Power of Nihilism

Is international law nihilistic? Being produced from nihilism and driven by it? And are even we nihilistic – we Critical scholars who stand beyond the end of history? Not a break from the past but a continuation? That is the gambit of this thesis: to explore the nihilistic inner life of international law, through the root and stem of its creation and development, right up until the contemporary movement towards Critical approaches to the discipline. Through the embracing scope of nihilism, I argue that each of these turns and evolutions can be tracked back to a single logic. The first Volume of this thesis is dedicated to the theorisation of nihilism and how it could be existentially connected to international law. Using the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, I link nihilism to what I term the ‘civilising psychosis’: a process (or sickness) by which the production of the human and the state is co-constitutive. Through this bond, it becomes possible to argue that the structures of nihilism, and the civilising psychosis, frame and condition the development of legal concepts. In Volume II, I take the civilising psychosis and apply it to the creation of the European global order of sovereign states. Here I suggest that transformations within sovereignty doctrine have been devices of managing and rearticulating the civilising psychosis. Applying literary techniques, this Volume takes the form of a ‘A play in three acts’. Within it, I follow the civilising psychosis, first, in the domestic generation of sovereignty, through to the use of sovereignty in 19th century imperialism, before bringing the civilising excesses of this latter period into confrontation with Critical scholarship. Through the violence of this encounter, I intend to begat recognition and disorientation. Rather than marking a departure from the civilising psychosis, such scholarships could be its most visceral manifestation