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National Discourses (national + discourse)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences83%

Selected Abstracts

Imperial versus National Discourse: The Case of Russia

NATIONS AND NATIONALISM, Issue 1 2000
David G. Rowley
It is inaccurate and misleading to apply the term ,nationalism' to Russia prior to the present day. Both Tsarist and Soviet leaders sought to maintain an empire and not a nation-state, and their national consciousness was imperial rather than national. The lack of Russian nationalism was crucial for Russian history since it explains the failure of both Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union. Modern societies cannot be successfully constructed upon the basis of imperial thinking. The absence of Russian nationalism also has significance for nationalism theory. Russia possessed the social, political and cultural characteristics that have been adduced as ,causes' of nationalism by a wide variety of scholars, yet Russia failed to develop a nationalist movement. This suggests that what is crucial to modem nationalism is the appearance of a particularist, secular ideology, since the most notable aspect in which Russia differed from Europe was Russia's universalistic, religious and imperialist discourse of national identity. [source]

Mobile discourse: political bumper stickers as a communication event in Israel

JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION, Issue 2 2000
L-R Bloch
The use of political bumper stickers in Israel began as a spontaneous protest medium, evolving into a routinized form of public discourse, taking place throughout the year, independently of national elections. The rules of interaction of this nontraditional means of political communication are identified and the complex relationships between the messages within their social situation are investigated using an ethnographic model. This analysis reveals that the medium does indeed constitute a structured means of expression with identifiable forms, rules, and usages, affording the person in the street a way of participating in the national discourse, bypassing traditional avenues of influence. The detailed examination of a single political bumper sticker reveals a structure parallel to the overall code, further demonstrating the intricacy of the messages. The analysis shows how this political discourse reflects social norms peculiar to Israel and how its use has become an affirmation of cultural identity. Because the fundamental properties of political bumper stickers have now been exposed, it is possible to examine how the actual use of this medium changes the structure of political agency in society through the presumption that ordinary individuals have the right of access to the public debate of national political issues, a right heretofore exclusively the prerogative of institutional power holders. [source]

"Sophisticated People Versus Rednecks": Economic Restructuring and Class Difference in America's West

ANTIPODE, Issue 1 2002
Lucy Jarosz
In this paper, we argue for the importance of constructing a human geography of white class difference. More particularly, we present a theoretical framework for understanding the cultural politics of class and whiteness in the context of rural restructuring. We theorize these politics through an examination of the national discourse of redneck that has emerged in the US. We analyze the term "redneck" as one of several rhetorical categories that refer to rural white poor people. We argue that while various terms are employed in geographically specific ways and cannot be used interchangeably, they nonetheless function similarly in positioning the white rural poor. Our examination of redneck discourse exemplifies these processes and points up the need for a broader analysis of representational strategies that reinforce class difference among whites. Drawing upon three case studies of white rural poverty, we deconstruct these imagined rural spaces by situating discourses about white rural poor people in the context of geographically specific political economies of power and social relations in Kentucky, Florida, and Washington. These case studies, as well as the national discourse of redneck, represent rural poverty as a lifestyle choice and as an individualized cultural trait. Abstract rural spaces are construed as poor, underdeveloped, and wild; rural, white poor people are represented as lazy, dirty, obsolescent, conservative, or alternative. A focus upon the political economy of community resource relationships and the construction and reproduction of redneck discourses reveals how exploitative material processes are justified by naming others and blaming the persistence of rural poverty upon the poor themselves. [source]

Sentimental Visions of Empire in Eighteenth-Century Studies

LITERATURE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 1 2009
Lynn Festa
This survey of recent critical work on the role played by the sentimental in eighteenth-century representations of empire is organized around four central issues. The first addresses the double-edged use of sentimental writing as a form of ideological mystification , the palliating representation of scenes of colonial violence and imperial exploitation as moments of benevolence or sentimental exchange , and as a form of critique , as a means of representing the causes and consequences of remote actions as an incitement to proper action. The second takes up the way sentimentality is entwined with questions of commerce as a means of thinking about relations across the vast distances of empire, focusing in particular on the way sentimental tropes enabled thinking about the emergence of the global. The third turns to the utility of sentimental language for forging bonds of sympathetic identification with broader communities of nation and of empire, with particular attention to the way the extension of sympathy to another imperils the sanctity of the feeling self, while the final section addresses the way sentimental tropes police the circulation of sympathetic feeling as the means of monitoring the very boundaries of the human in the context of eighteenth-century empire. Throughout I stress the need for more comparative work on the role played by the sentimental not only within different domains of imperial activity but also across periods, disciplines, and national discourses. The essay includes an extensive bibliography of recent studies of eighteenth-century sentimentality in relation to empire. [source]

TOWARDS GLOBAL SCHOLARSHIP IN PUBLIC AFFAIRS

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 3 2010
GAYLORD GEORGE CANDLER
One can imagine two futures for public administration, public management and public service around the world. A first would be what we see as a continuation of the status quo: with public administration essentially continuing as a series of national discourses, with perhaps a bit of cross-fertilization, but with this characterized by a classic core-periphery model. The preferable model, outlined in this paper, would see the development of an integrated community of scholars of public affairs. At least three hurdles need to be overcome to arrive at this integrated community. A first concerns the tension in the periphery between an epistemic nationalism and epistemic colonialism. The second hurdle to be overcome concerns the central role of the American literature in intellectual discourse in public administration. A third hurdle is more specific to public administration: what Canadian Iain Gow has referred to as public administration's profile, as ,une science empirique par excellence'. [source]

Transnationalism and Agency in East Malaysia: Filipina Migrants in the Nightlife Industries

THE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 2 2007
Anne-Marie Hilsdon
East Malaysia's vibrant nightlife is a lucrative industry employing many Filipina migrants. The paper addresses the impact on Filipinas of discursive regimes of work, the state and family. These are derived from national discourses of ethnicity, class and nation intertwined with dominant discourses of womanhood in both Malaysia and the Philippines. The paper argues that in transnational space disciplinary regimes are heavily constraining, but resistance and negotiation are possible. The paper follows a feminist poststructuralist approach, which finds that disciplinary forces, rather than being coercive, are subtly inculcated in the migrant subject. Embodiment is never absolute and everyday actions of women initiate instability in the category ,Woman'. This offers the opportunity for agency. Ethnographic methods are used to explore the tensions and constraints of the Filipinas' everyday experience of migration. In the setting of a largely non-Muslim East Malaysia, ethnic identity seems differently constructed than in a predominantly Muslim Peninsula Malaysia. Through friendship and marriage with Malaysians, and integration into local communities, Filipinas are able to resist and negotiate their migrant status. The actions of Filipinas and their local Malaysian partners contest conservative notions of ethnicity, gender, class and nation in both the Philippines and Malaysia. This offers a potential for agency for Filipinas, the possibility for which could also extend to the largely non-Muslim local Malaysians with whom they share their lives. [source]