CULTURAL OTHERING, BANAL OCCIDENTALISM AND THE DISCURSIVE CONSTRUCTION OF THE ‘GREEK CRISIS’ IN GLOBAL MEDIA: A CASE STUDY

In the wake of Billig’s thesis on banal nationalism, numerous social psychology studies have been produced documenting on the explicit manifestation or implicit indexicalisation of variants of national identity within text and talk. Within this strand of work, some attention has been paid to ways in which the banal manifestation of national referents may be further interrogated from a critical perspective focusing on Occidentalism. Drawing on this emerging line of research, an analysis is presented here of a travelogue on ‘the Greek crisis’, published in a globally circulating magazine (Vanity Fair). Using tools and concepts from the discursive turn in social psychology, the analysis highlights ways in which Occidentalist assumptions claim rhetorical and ideological legitimacy within a text that advances a ‘culturalist’ explanation of the financial crisis in which Greece has been entangled since 2009. The analysis focuses on ways in which the authorial voice others Greece culturally, while at the same time, manages its own accountability and (re-) affirms its Occidental credentials

Quality management for Small and Medium size enterprises. An application of SPC in a plastics industry.

Enterprises need to develop an appropriate quality management approach in order to produce conforming products. This project deals with quality concepts and tools which are mainly adopted by small and medium size enterprises. It is widely accepted that Statistical Quality Control (SPC) involves several methods and tools that can be used in order to examine and solve a wide range of quality problems. SPC tools are implemented in a company operating in the Greek plastics industry. The charts used to plot the data collected indicate the existence of special-cause variation. A cause-and-effect diagram is used to assess the contribution of several factors provoking variation in the production process. A process capability study is conducted after eliminating the samples plotting out of the specification limits. The study indicates poor capability and suggests using more effort in improving quality performance. Extensive reference is made on an SPC implementation process, while management commitment, training and teamwork are highlighted as the most critical factors to SPC successful introduction. In addition, the ASTM D882 is presented as one of the most sophisticated methods regarding the determination of polymers tensile properties. It is expected that both SPC and ASTM D 882 can contribute in establishing a more sophisticated quality management approach which will be strongly based on the use of statistics

Leadership, mobilization of risky behaviours and accountability: The Church of Greece leaders' public talk during the COVID-19 pandemic

Social psychologists have typically examined leadership and risk-taking behaviours through a social identity lens. However, the rhetorical/ideological aspects of such processes as well as leaders' accountability management practices have not been adequately studied. We address this gap by focusing on leaders of the Church of Greece (CoG), who, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, insisted that their congregation should keep receiving the Holy Communion, which typically involves the practice of spoon-sharing. We present a discursive analysis of 17 interviews with leaders of the CoG given in Greek media channels, exploring how they construct participation in the ritual. When Church leaders urged their audiences to engage in risky practices, they assumed various social identity positions (e.g. scientifically informed; civic minded), implicating competing ideological frameworks. They also managed their personal and institutional accountability for potential viral transmissions by placing responsibility for adverse effects on their followers. Implications for social psychological theory are discussed

Constructions of Europe in the run-up to the EU referendum in the UK

The paper reports on a focus group study on representations of Europe, conducted in England in the run-up to the UK EU referendum. Four themes were identified in the analysis: ‘cultured Europe’; ‘little Europe/global Britain’; ‘Europe as a cultural threat’; and ‘Eastern vs. Western Europe’. Analysis of these themes showed that Europe was an ambivalent identity category that could encapsulate contrary ideas such as cosmopolitanism/isolationism and cultural enrichment/undermining. Europe’s relation to Britain was also ambivalent in the data. Britain could be positioned as superior to Europe, sometimes being seen as closer to the ‘European essence’ in the context of the EU’s eastward expansion, which was seen as diluting European culture. But, Britain could also be seen as backward compared to the idea of cosmopolitan continental Europe. These different lines of argument and their ideological underpinnings are explored in the discussion of the findings

Everyday cosmopolitanism in representations of Europe among young Romanians in Britain

The paper presents an analysis of everyday cosmopolitanism in constructions of Europe among young Romanian nationals living in Britain. Adopting a social representations approach, cosmopolitanism is understood as a cultural symbolic resource that is part of everyday knowledge. Through a discursively-oriented analysis of focus group data, we explore the ways in which notions of cosmopolitanism intersect with images of Europeanness in the accounts of participants. We show that, for our participants, representations of Europe are anchored in an Orientalist schema of West-vs.-East, whereby the West is seen as epitomising European values of modernity and progress, while the East is seen as backward and traditional. Our findings further show that representations of cosmopolitanism reinforce this East/West dichotomy, within a discourse of ‘Occidental cosmopolitanism’. The paper concludes with a critical discussion of the diverse and complex ideological foundations of these constructions of European cosmopolitanism and their implications

Community resilience and flooding in UK guidance: a critical review of concepts, definitions, and their implications

Community resilience is one of the main strategies that UK governments employ to deal with the impact of floods. In this paper, we analyse how community resilience is used in 28 UK guidance documents that refer to floods and discuss the benefits and drawbacks of different conceptualizations. We show that some documents represent community resilience as the absence of illness, as the opposite of vulnerability, as a static and unchanging element, or in a circular way as both a cause and an outcome. By contrast, some documents avoid generalizations and focus more specifically on the concept’s behavioural, relational, cognitive, and psychological aspects. We discuss the implications of different conceptualizations of community resilience for its operationalization by policymakers and practitioners

Greek national identity in talk The rhetorical articulation of an ideological dilemma

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Quality management for Small and Medium size enterprises. An application of SPC in a plastics industry.

Enterprises need to develop an appropriate quality management approach in order to produce conforming products. This project deals with quality concepts and tools which are mainly adopted by small and medium size enterprises. It is widely accepted that Statistical Quality Control (SPC) involves several methods and tools that can be used in order to examine and solve a wide range of quality problems. SPC tools are implemented in a company operating in the Greek plastics industry. The charts used to plot the data collected indicate the existence of special-cause variation. A cause-and-effect diagram is used to assess the contribution of several factors provoking variation in the production process. A process capability study is conducted after eliminating the samples plotting out of the specification limits. The study indicates poor capability and suggests using more effort in improving quality performance. Extensive reference is made on an SPC implementation process, while management commitment, training and teamwork are highlighted as the most critical factors to SPC successful introduction. In addition, the ASTM D882 is presented as one of the most sophisticated methods regarding the determination of polymers tensile properties. It is expected that both SPC and ASTM D 882 can contribute in establishing a more sophisticated quality management approach which will be strongly based on the use of statistics

‘Europe’ in Greece: Lay constructions of Europe in the context of Greek immigration debates

In this paper, we analyse discourses about Europe in Greek debates about immigration and citizenship and highlight the complexities of ‘Europeanness’ as a symbolic resource for argumentation in these debates. Our data consist of lay discourses from two rounds of online public deliberation (2009/2010 and 2015) about a controversial new citizenship law in Greece. Our analysis shows that Europe is an ambivalent category. On the one hand, Europe symbolises progress, but, on the other hand, it is also constructed in terms of decline and ‘contamination’ by multiculturalism. Further, our analysis shows that the category of Europe can be mobilised in contradictory ways, in order to support arguments for and against citizenship rights for migrants. The paper concludes with a discussion of the ways in which constructions of Europe are implicated in processes of othering and inclusion in the context of current immigration debates