Political Discourse Theory

1
Political Discourse Theory

• Dr. Steven Griggs (University of Birmingham)
• and
• Dr. David Howarth (University of Essex)

2
Following Foucault our approach would begin by
problematising the problematisations

• Our object of study is thus always constructed,
  which means that a range of disparate empirical
  phenomena have to be constituted as a problem,
  and the problem has to be located at the
  appropriate level of abstraction and complexity.
• The problem then has to be examined sometimes
  resolved or dissolved by a careful
  genealogical disentangling that exposes the
  various historical threads and trajectories that
  constitute the problems and identities we
  confront in the present.
• The latter only emerge via the various struggles
  and political clashes between forces in critical
  conjunctures over time (Foucault,1984).
• Genealogy lays bear excluded possibilities that
  can form the basis for alternative
  problematizations and projects.

3
Analysing Texts

• In this instance we focus initially on a text.
• But texts need to be placed in context i.e. in
  relation to other texts and social practices,
  both spatially and temporally.
• Of course, in our approach, practices themselves
  can be treated as texts (in Derridas sense of
  the term).
• This highlights in a sense their contingency and
  historicity.

4

• First move to situate this text spatially and
  temporally.
• Here, we would place the text within the context
  of New Labours on-going engagement with the
  problem of community e.g. communitarianism,
  concerns of civil renewal, britishness,
  respect
• And part of this context is a series of
  dislocatory experiences which led to different
  articulations of community riots in northern
  cities, new questions of immigration, faith
  schools and terrorist bombings and the perceived
  threat of Muslim fundamentalism
• We would emphasise the sequencing of this text.
  For us, it would be important to situate it in
  relations to other texts such as the Cantle
  report, to which we shall return.

5

• This is therefore an our initial problematization
  of these problematizations
• And, it is important to stress that this
  problematization has to be understood in relation
  to others and part of coming to terms with this
  problematization is situating it in relation to
  others.

6
Problematising Our Shared Future - Cohesion
minus Integration

• Existing local policy developments biased towards
  cohesion as the more developed policy
  framework (para 3.1, p.38)
• The process of cohesion alone may not be enough
  to help some areas respond to their shifting
  populations, and activities to welcome newcomers
  and help settled communities cope with change
  will be just as important (para 3.4, p. 38)
• stalling of integration contributing to
  persistent separation, concerns about the
  continued isolation of some second and third
  generation immigrants might be in part addressed
  by an understanding of why the process of
  integration in some cases may have stalled
  para 3.5, p.38)
• We have therefore developed a new definition of
  integration and cohesion, with the two concepts
  locked together to create an integrated whole
  (para 3.7, p. 39)

7
Political Discourse Theory

• Dr. Steven Griggs (University of Birmingham)
• and
• Dr. David Howarth (University of Essex)

8
Re-articulating cohesion

• Clearly demarcating cohesion and
  integrationcohesion is principally the process
  that must happen in all communities to ensure
  different groups of people get on well together
  while integration is principally the process that
  ensures that new residents and existing residents
  adapt to one another (para. 3.2, p.38)
• activities to welcome newcomers and help settled
  communities cope with change will be just as
  important to some areas as promoting interaction
  across established divides will be to others
  (para 3.4)
• cohesion has all too often been seen as
  referring only to minorities and immigrants to
  race and faith or visible difference (para 3.7,
  p.39).

9
Problematising Our Shared Future confusion
of meaning

• No local purchase of community cohesion it
  doesnt actually mean anything at the grass roots
  level.. (p. 38) overwhelming response..
  about the existing definition was one of
  confusion (para 3.9, p. 39)
• Which results in narrow practices particularly
  among practitioners who found it easier to focus
  on race relations or equality rather than
  cohesion (para 3.9, p.39)
• cohesion has all too often been seen as
  referring only to minorities and immigrants to
  race and faith or visible difference. This allows
  some areas to claim that they do not have to do
  anything about cohesion as they have no
  minorities or only a few (para 3.7, p. 39)

10
Articulation of Solutions

• Demand for clearer focus on cohesion and
  integration as distinct two processes that go on
  side by side and that interact with one
  another (para 3.3, p.38) or two tightly
  interlocking concepts (para 3.4, p.38)
• Demand for new definition We have therefore
  developed a new definition of integration and
  cohesion, with the two concepts locked together
  to create an integrated whole (para 3.7, p. 39)
• widen the definitions from narrow and
  potentially loaded understandings- recognising
  that cohesion is not just about race and faith,
  and that integration in particular is not about
  assimilation (para 3.6, p.38
• Demand for local discretion (part of definition
  3.14). This latter demand refutes the centralised
  imposition of practices and recognises local
  diversity of practice bottom-up driven
  policy-making.
• Equally demand for mainstreaming of cohesion and
  integration everybodys business (para. 3.7,
  p.39)

11
The Problem of confusion

• Defines the problem as confusion or the absence
  of clarity not of political opposition from
  within the political community
• Feeds into the blaming of the centre and
  privileges the local (and the community) over the
  centre (government)
• Communities become a positive space which has
  to bear the brunt of external developments the
  community itself or the individuals within it
  (their beliefs and values) are not the source of
  any potential conflicts. For example, local
  agencies can address the new challenges of
  economic and demographic change at a time when
  local experience is increasingly influenced by
  what is happening globally (para 3.4, p.38)
• Compare to Cantle (see below)

12
The logic of the stipulative definition

• The need for the definition to be clear is
  important para 3.8, p. 39.
• avoid navel-gazing of definition in favour of a
  focus on what was working in those local areas
• Reference to practical conversations in
  opposition to navel gazing and top-down
  definitions indeed the definition should be born
  from practice ties into evidence-based
  policy-making and what works (New Labour)
• Make is clear so we know what we mean, to be
  practically useful in structuring policy
  responses
• Previous definition was unclear? logic here
  that require clarity and definition as this will
  guide practice
• Definitive but aspirational?
• What is the role of defining? Is it
  representative, performative or constitutive? Or
  all of these?

13
Situating the text in relation to previous
problematizations e.g. cohesive communities

• The Rhetoric of Community Cohesion
  Together-We-Can1
• In the rhetoric of community cohesion, cohesive
  communities are defined in opposition to the
  spectre of local communities that are riven by
  polarisation (Home Office 2002 9) and
  fractures which may lead to conflict (LGA,
  2004 4) and where individuals pursue parallel
  lives that often do not seem to touch at any
  point, let alone overlap and promote any
  meaningful interchanges (Home Office, 2001 9).
  
• 1 Led by the Home Office Civil Renewal Unit,
  Together-We-Can is the New Labour action plan to
  get citizens and public bodies working together
  to make life better. Regeneration and Cohesion
  is one of the four strands identified within the
  plan. See communities.homeoffice.gov.uk/civil/toge
  ther-we-can

14
Community Cohesion

• Britain needs to be a country in which people
  from all backgrounds join one another in creating
  leading edge companies, improving neighbourhoods,
  participating in democratic decision-making and
  exchanging ideas in every field of work, from
  arts and culture to science and business. Without
  this basic sense of common identity and
  commitment to participation, not only are these
  opportunities missed but, at worst, fear and
  conflict can develop. (Home Office, 2005b 42)

15
Unity through diversity and the appeal to
common vision

• unity through diversity should be the theme -
  the message must be that cultural pluralism and
  integration are not incompatible (LGA, 2002
  13).
• The forging of trust and respect for local
  diversity, and nurturing a sense of belonging and
  confidence in local people (LGA, 2004 4).
• Repeated appeals are made to the production of
  harmony and common values. In the policy
  guidance, Building Community Cohesion into Area
  Based Initiatives, neighbourhood schemes should
  ensure that communities are able to live and
  work harmoniously together. This harmony is
  summed up by the official term community
  cohesion (Community Cohesion Unit, 2004 5).

16
Fantasy and Myth

• Thus community cohesion comes to function as a
  myth and not an empty signifier - that offers
  the prospect of some form of unified society that
  both renders visible and then seeks to cover-over
  and mediate a number of dislocations across and
  within neighbourhoods dislocations to do with
  the inequalities of race and ethnicity, class,
  age, faith, but also fears of crime and
  antisocial behaviour, and economic failure (see
  Figure 1). It symbolises a challenge for all
  individuals and for all communities which lies
  at the centre of what makes a strong, vibrant and
  safe community. whether we live in the heart
  of a big city or in a leafy village (Home Office,
  2005a 4).

17

• community cohesion and harmony become a
  fantasy or in Lacanian terms, to cover over the
  impossibility of a fully constituted order.

18
Integration and Cohesion

• Similar fantasmatic appeals to shared future
  and shared purpose repeated references to
  shared future (para 3.7, 3.3) Most notably in
  para 3.13 which embraces the sense of a shared
  purpose that has informed our thinking of shared
  futures

19
Different problematization?

• How far does Our Shared Future buy into myth of
  cohesive communities thus failing to come to
  terms with the contingency and plurality of
  community?
• How well does it recognise the failure of
  existing practices to address the challenge of
  how to bind together in face of increasing
  difference.
• a recognition of how focusing on diversity and
  difference has the potential to divide
  communities but refers to how shared futures
  can overcome or at least address this.
• It problematizes issues of diversity not the
  only things that matter (para 3.7, p.39) it
  cohesion was all too often caught up in wider
  debates about multiculturalism that we felt were
  unhelpful (3.9)

20
Critical explanation

• Could be argued that see a discursive shift here.
• If that is the case how do you explain this
  shift? The character of the shift and the
  character of the new discourse?
• Our task then is to critically explain these
  changes and phenomena.
• Here we would turn to the construction of demands
  and logics.

21
Demands

• In our perspective, we connect the construction
  of problems to the articulation of demands.
• The construction of demands is not automatic.
  They are in fact the products of various
  problematizations
• Arise out of the failures and dislocations of
  social practices, which only appear when normal
  ways of going on are interrupted. In sum,
  demands are constituted out of the frustrations
  and grievances that arise from the making visible
  of the ontological negativity that inhabits all
  social relations.
• Demands are rooted in these disrupted practices,
  they can also be linked together to form wider
  identities and political projects that can
  challenge existing relations in the name of
  something new. (They can, of course, be
  disarticulated by the operation of other
  political logics.)

22
Logics (Glynos and Howarth, 2007)

• Three basic types of logic - social, political
  and fantasmatic used to characterize, explain
  and evaluate/criticize the processes under
  investigation.
• In general terms, the notion of a logic is
  designed to capture the point, rules and
  ontological preconditions of a particular
  practice or regime of practices.

23
Logics

• social logics enables us to characterize
  practices or regimes by setting out the rules
  informing the practice and the kinds of entities
  populating it
• political logics allow us to account for their
  historical emergence and formation by focusing on
  the conflicts and contestations surrounding their
  constitution. Here we invoke Laclau and Mouffes
  logics of equivalence and difference which
  emphasize the dynamic process by which political
  frontiers are constructed, stabilized,
  strengthened, or weakened.
• fantasmatic logics furnish us with the means to
  explain the way subjects are gripped or held by a
  practice or regime of practices.