Discursive Resources (discursive + resource)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Searching for Belonging , An Analytical Framework

GEOGRAPHY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 6 2010
Marco Antonsich
Belonging is a notion both vaguely defined and ill-theorized. Scholars in various social disciplines often take this notion for granted, as if its meaning is somewhat self-explanatory. Others tend to equate it with the notion of identity, citizenship, or both. By relying on a critical reading of an extensive literature across academic disciplines, this study aims to offer an analytical framework for the study of belonging. I argue that belonging should be analyzed both as a personal, intimate, feeling of being ,at home' in a place (place-belongingness) and as a discursive resource that constructs, claims, justifies, or resists forms of socio-spatial inclusion/exclusion (politics of belonging). The risk of focusing only on one of these two dimensions is to fall in the trap of either a socially de-contextualized individualism or an all-encompassing social(izing) discourse. The open question is whether the increasing cultural and ethnic diversification of contemporary societies can lead to the formation of communities of belonging beyond communities of identity. [source]


Barriers to Managing Diversity in a UK Constabulary: The Role of Discourse

JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES, Issue 7 2002
Penny Dick
The literature on diversity management has tended to obfuscate some of the theoretical and methodological shortcomings associated with research in this area. Specifically, the literature tends to make a number of rather naïve assumptions about the experiences and aspirations of disadvantaged groups. This paper seeks to problematize the universalist and partisan tendencies that typify much of the diversity literature by focusing on the issue of ,resistance'. Using a form of discourse analysis informed by Foucauldian principles, the paper explores how ,resistance' to diversity initiatives is expressed by both ,dominant' and ,subordinated' groups in a UK police force. It is argued that ,resistance' is better thought of as a discursive resource that can be drawn upon to justify or account for one's own organizational experiences and, in turn, the need to both justify and account for one's experiences is located in broader discursive fields that reproduce dominant ideologies of liberal democracies. The theoretical implications of this position are discussed and a case is presented for more critical and theoretical approaches in the diversity management literature. [source]


Examining resistance, accommodation and the pursuit of aspiration in the Indian IT-BPO space: reflections on two case studies

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS JOURNAL, Issue 2 2010
M. N. Ravishankar
ABSTRACT This article is based on case studies of two organisations: an India-based information technology (IT) services company and a financial services company located in the UK and India. Although they operate in different sectors and have some notable contrasts, both can be seen as typifying aspects of India's new economy. Our article explores the lived experience of working in this economy,a perspective that has been relatively neglected in the extant literature. Drawing on Homi Bhabha's notions of ambivalence and mimicry, and V. S. Naipaul's powerful illustrations of these concepts in his fiction and non-fiction works, we report on how respondents talked about their aspirations within India's emerging economy, and examine their mobilisation of particular discursive resources as forms of accommodation and resistance to the demands they face at work. [source]


Discourses for decolonization: affirming Maori authority in New Zealand workplaces

JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY & APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 5 2006
Ingrid Huygens
Abstract When dominant group members participate in the work of decolonization, their tasks are different from those of indigenous peoples. This study identifies key features of alternative discourses used by members of the dominant group in New Zealand workplaces. Sixteen accounts of organizational changes to implement te Tiriti o Waitangi, 1840, which guaranteed indigenous Maori authority, were analysed using the methods of critical discourse analysis. Two new resources were critically important to narrators of such change: (i) affirmation of self-determined Maori authority (tino rangatiratanga) and (ii) pursuit of a ,right relationship' between Maori and Pakeha in a new constitutional framework of dual authorities. These discursive resources are discussed in the context of an ongoing critical dialogue between Maori and Pakeha about decolonization work. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Combating prejudice and racism: new interventions from a functional analysis of racist language

JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY & APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 1 2003
Bernard Guerin
Abstract Based on a conversational model of language-use-in-social-context, this article focuses on one particular form of racist and prejudiced talking that has not received enough attention,conversations in which racist statements function to maintain groups and relationships rather than seriously promote racism. Despite their casualness, such statements are still pernicious, and a range of potential interventions are proposed for this language function. These involve actively altering a community's discursive resources to include more rejoinders to racist comments. Such rejoinders must be utilized in the most appropriate way for any relationship, and this might mean polite corrections, witty repartee, strong put-downs to silence someone making racist comments, or as counter-jokes to racist jokes, depending upon the social context and power relations involved. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Pragmatic post-structuralism (II): an outcomes evaluation of a stopping violence programme

JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY & APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 4 2001
Mandy Morgan
Abstract This paper reports features of a distinctly post-structuralist ,outcome evaluation' of a New Zealand stopping violence programme for men who have assaulted their spouses. Through analysis of pre- and post-programme interviews it was found that the men's accounts of their violence shifted as a consequence of their participation in and exposure to the programme's discursive resources. Overall the men's accounts demonstrated movement towards taking greater ownership and responsibility for their actions. However this trend was not universal and was mitigated through other pre-programme discursive resources. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


From National Service to Global Player: Transforming the Organizational Logic of a Public Broadcaster

JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES, Issue 6 2010
André Spicer
abstract We present organizational logics as a meso-level construct that lies between institutional theory's field-level logics and the sense-making activities of individual agents in organizations. We argue that an institutional logic can be operationalized empirically using the concept of a discourse , that is, a coherent symbolic system articulating what constitutes legitimate, reasonable, and effective conduct in, around, and by organizations. An organization may, moreover, be simultaneously exposed to several institutional logics that make up its broader ideational environment. Taking these three observations together enables us to consider an organizational logic as a spatially and temporally localized configuration of diverse discourses. We go on to show how organizational logics were transformed in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation between 1953 and 1999 by examining the changing discourses that appeared in the Corporation's annual reports. We argue that these discourses were modified through three main forms of discursive agency: (1) undertaking acts of ironic accommodation between competing discourses; (2) building chains of equivalence between the potentially contradictory discourses; and (3) reconciling new and old discourses through pragmatic acts of ,bricolage'. We found that, using these forms of discursive agency, a powerful coalition of actors was able to transform the dominant organizational logic of the ABC from one where the Corporation's initial mission was to serve national interests through public service to one that was ultimately focused on participating in a globalized media market. Finally, we note that discursive resources could be used as the basis for resistance by less powerful agents, although further research is necessary to determine exactly how more powerful and less powerful agents interact around the establishment of an organizational logic. [source]