Ethnography, discourse, and hegemony 2003

Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 2014

The aim of this paper is to discuss how approaches to discourse can face the charges for discursive idealism, and to show it empirically through the analysis of gender discourse in the mapping and reception of the life and work of Marija Jurić Zagorka, the first Croatian woman journalist, proto-feminist and the writer of popular fiction. The method is critical discourse analysis, which follows Foucault's concept of discourse, but attempts to overcome the criticism Foucault received for overemphasizing the potential of discourse to manipulate people. This is the reason motivating many revisions of Foucault's method mainly by attempting to introduce a theory of action in order to make a socially active subject link discourse and reality. CDA authored by Norman Fairclough introduces a three-dimensional concept of discourse (as text, discursive practice and social practice) and uses the Gramscian concept of hegemony (rather than ideology) to strategically try and surpass the charge for discourse determinism. Seeing discourse as social practice enables us to combine the perspectives of structure and action, because practice is at the same time determined by its position in the structured network of practices and a lived performance, a domain of social action and interaction that both reproduces structures and has the potential to transform them. Gramsci's concept of hegemony sees cultural production as a tool that maintains domination by securing the spontaneous consent of the subordinated. The results suggest a possible (subversive) intervention into the sphere of discursive practices (hegemonic struggle of different voices for supremacy in the order of discourse defining the reception of Zagorka) and indicate that detailed empirical research on discursive effects in a series of domains is a method of research on political investment of the order of discourse into social change.

CfP, 2019

In discourse studies, discourse is usually understood as the use of texts in various sorts of contexts (situational, historical, structural, institutional). From these practices of meaning production, different aspects of the social such as identities, believes, attitudes, institutions, social structures and new text production emerge. Despite this broad notion of discourse, the notion of ideology is often understood as sets of collective beliefs or mental representations. In contrast to such approaches, which see ideology as immaterial beliefs, in the last decade we observe a return of ideology critique in social and political philosophy, sociology and cultural studies. These interventions are considering specifically the material and practical dimensions of ideologies. Ideologies are seen therefore less as set of beliefs and representations but as practices related to an unsustainable social order and dominating power relations. Even if critical theory and discourse analysis have pointed to the crucial role of ideological aspects, both tendencies need deeper exchange and discussions on the role of ideology, discourse and materiality. Our understanding of ideology tries to bring together the analysis of society, understood as exploitive social order, with the analysis of practices that systematically reproduce this social order. Ideologies emerge from special contextualities as long as they relate texts to particular contexts, namely inequalities, exclusions and power structures. They contribute the reproduction of social order and ideological relations are at work in social struggles of change over hegemonic constellations as well. In this special issue we want to bring together critical discourse studies and critical theory in order to focus on the ideological dimensions of power, domination, inequality and injustices that are related to discourse production. In particular, the contributions of this special issue reflect on the material conditions of discourse productions. The authors will elaborate how language is related to the formation of hierarchies in discourses on gender, race and social class and to the specific cultural nature of human communication. We will furthermore elaborate how subject positions and subjectivities are formed by discourses in an unequal socio-material space, and we will reflect on the ideological role in these processes. A third group of contributions will discuss the relationship between ideology and critique. The research papers may include the following topics: • Update the notion of ideology and ideology critique bringing together social and political philosophy with discourse studies. • Articulate critical procedures to understand the complexity of ideology. • Discussion of the cultural nature and cultural diversity of ideology. • Focus specifically on the material conditions and practical effects of ideology. • Analyze the specific roles and functions of the ideological in different discourse setting. • Local, indigenous and multicultural perspectives on ideological systems. The editors: The editors are founding members of the international and interdisciplinary research group Discourse, Ideology and Political Economy (DIPE). Together they edited a special issue of Critical Discourse Studies on Marx and Discourse Studies and organized several winterschools and other academic events. Johannes Beetz is a doctoral researcher at the Centre for Applied Linguistics, University of Warwick. He studied sociology, philosophy, and American studies at the Johannes Gutenberg-University in Mainz, Germany. His research interests include Critical Theory & Marxism, Discourse Studies, and Post-Structuralist Theory. His publications include Materiality and Subject in Marxism, (Post-)Structuralism, and Material Semiotics(Palgrave 2016) and Material Discourse, Materialist Analysis – Approaches in Discourse Studies (with Veit Schwab, Lexington 2017). Benno Herzog is Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, University of Valencia, Spain. He has worked and conducted research in Germany (Universities of Frankfurt and Mainz), the United Kingdom (University of Manchester, Open University, and University of Warwick), and Brazil (Federal University of Paraíba). His research focuses on social critique and critical theory of society, discourse theory and discourse analysis, and migration and discrimination. His latest book is Discourse Analysis as Social Critique(Palgrave 2016) Jens Maesse, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Giessen. His research focus is on discourse analysis, sociology of science and education, economic sociology and political economy. His publications include: “Austerity discourses in Europe: How economic experts create identity projects”, Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 31(1): 8-24 (2018). “The elitism dispositif. Hierarchization, discourses of excellence and organisational change in European economics”, Higher Education 73, 909-927 (2017).

Environment and Planning D-society & Space, 1992

Feminism, decolonization, and 'new social movements' have decentered the geopolitical power of the 'First World' and ru~tured the rel~tions of expl?itation. domination, a~d imperialism that undergird it and the authonty of the while, male, ruhng class, Western subject. The tensions and reorientations in the macrological sphere resonate in social and cultural discourse where feminist theory, poststructuralism, and subaltern studies have called into question the subject positions associated with these relations of power. Rather than making clear that all observers and commentators stand someplace, this 'sea change' left many intellectuals adrift, flirting with disabling relativism. Given the projects of representing how others stand and understanding the ground on which they stand, ethnographers have been late to recognize their complicity in masking their own positions as they construct the objects of their inquiry. As intellectuals operating in a postcolonial world, we must take seriously Spivak's admonition about representation as a staging of the world in a political context and begin to connect the 'micrological textures of power' with larger political-economic relations. In this expanded field, we can no longer valorize the concrete experience of oppressed peoples while remaining uncritical of our role as intellectuals. Neither can we presume to speak for or about peoples and nations as if they were outside of the contemporary world system, refusing to recognize that our ability to construct them as such is rooted in a larger system of domination. In this paper the author develops these themes by offering a critique of familiar modes and practices of representation and draws on ethnographic research in New York City and rural Sudan to argue that by interrogating the subject positions of ourselves as intellectuals as well as the objects of our inquiry we can excavate a 'space of betweenness' wherein the multiple determinations of a decentered world are connected. Appropriating this knowledge we may develop enabling analyses of power and difference to find collective paths toward change.

Journal of Language and Politics

2014

This paper has its genesis in concerns about the return to "the real" in social and political theory and analysis. This trend is linked to a reaction against the "linguistic turn", on the grounds that an exclusive focus on language undercuts political analysis by refusing to engage with "material reality". Foucault and "discourse" are common targets of this critique. Against this interpretation, the authors direct attention to the analytic and political usefulness of Foucault's concept of "discursive practices", which, it argues, has been much misunderstood. Discursive practices, as developed by Foucault, refers to the practices (or operations) of discourses, meaning knowledge formations, not to linguistic practices or language use. The focus is on how knowledge is produced through plural and contingent practices across different sites. Such an approach bridges a symbolic-material distinction and signals the always political natu...

Power and ideology in different Discursive Practices, 1995

ISBN: 1-85521-483-0 Julieta Haidar y Lidia Rodríguez The central Issue of this paper is the relationship between discourse, ideology, and power. It is based on the French approach to discourse analysis, which proposes that discursive practices go beyond merely accomplishing linguistic rules but also comprise more complex processes. Taking into account conditions of discourse production and reception, the paper analyses several discursive devices utilized to reproduce ideology and maintain power in social discourse.

Late 20th century developments in social sciences and humanities have placed particular focus on the symbolic aspects of reproduction of social order, stressing the importance of discursive work in the process. It has become widely accepted that discourse is profoundly embedded in society and culture, and hence, closely related also to all forms of power and social inequality. Therefore , it rightfully assumes a central position among the research objects of contemporary social sciences. The aim of this article is to critically examine the impact of the interpretive turn on the study of culture and symbolic registers of society. The analysis focuses on three approaches to the study of discourse, culture and society: critical discourse analysis, Pierre Bourdieu's sociology of culture and Jeffrey Alexander's strong program in cultural sociology. These approaches are further analyzed according to their position within Burawoy's division of sociological labor, particularly between critical and public (engaged) sociology. Finally, the author suggests that engagement in detailed reconstructions of discursive manifestations of power, symbolic struggles and/or discursive codes in a society can provide valuable insight that could open up space for social engagement. However, in order to fully grasp the importance of symbolic aspects for the everyday reproduction of social order, the focus of analysis must also be placed on the role cultural traits and practices (understood as a discursive resources like any other) play in constructing stratificational categories, identities and distinctions, masking the very roots of inequalities that created the perceived cultural differences in the first place.