Organizing resistance movements: contribution of the political discourse theory

Abstract

The main purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility of articulating Political Discourse Theory (PDT) together with Organizational Studies (OS), while using the opportunity to introduce PDT to those OS scholars who have not yet come across it. The bulk of this paper introduces the main concepts of PDT, discussing how they have been applied to concrete, empirical studies of resistance movements. In recent years, PDT has been increasingly appropriated by OS scholars to problematize and analyze resistances and other forms of social antagonisms within organizational settings, taking the relational and contingent aspects of struggles into consideration. While the paper supports the idea of a joint articulation of PDT and OS, it raises a number of critical questions of how PDT concepts have been empirically used to explain the organization of resistance movements. The paper sets out a research agenda for how both PDT and OS can together contribute to our understanding of new, emerging organizational forms of resistance movements.

A Transnational Agri-Food System for Whom? The Struggle for Hegemony at Rio+20

“…Drawing especially on data collected from Rio+20, we found that "Food" constitutes the common denominator where the articulations have occurred since the 1970s. As pointed out in the previous section, Food is the vaguest and emptiest signifier within this hegemonic and counter-hegemonic discourse formation in transnational agrifood systems that acts as a nodal point (Bommel & Spicer, 2011;Dellagnelo et al, 2014). We therefore identified the floating signifiers that articulate Food as a nodal point in Rio+20.…”

“…The collective identity emerges from the articulation and re-articulation of these discursive elements (Bommel & Spicer, 2011). Here, for example, the articulation of food is sufficiently vague and empty to act as a nodal point, which, in neo-Gramscian discourse theory plays an important role in forging alliances between hitherto disconnected discourses and institutional actors (Bommel & Spicer, 2011;Dellagnelo et al, 2014). Thus, emptiness is "revealed a s an essential quality of the nodal point, as an important condition of possibility for its hegemonic success" (Howarth & Stavrakakis, 2000, p. 9).…”

“…In turn, nodal points comprise a range of floating signifiers that are articulated differently in different discourses (Laclau & Moufe, 2001). They are floating because they accommodate many different interpretations and can be attached to many possible patterns of meaning, depending on how they are combined with other words and practices (Dellagnelo et al, 2014). Additionally, as illustrated in Exhibit 1, in neo-Gramscian discourse theory, civil society plays a central role in neoGramscian theory since it offers "the vital ideological ground work that establishes those structures of social and cultural consent that support, and enable the reproduction of the state and the economy" (Spicer & Böhm, 2007, p. 13).…”

“…However, it is important to recognize that not all civil society actors are constantly resisting hegemonies, as sometimes implied in MOS literature. That is, in MOS in general, and in neo-Gramscian studies in MOS in particular, civil society is sometimes treated as a black box, in which different political interests and practices receive inadequate scholarly attention (Bommel & Spicer, 2011;Dellagnelo et al, 2014). Hence, there is an urgent need to open up this black box in order to explore the organizational nuances that exist between different civil society actors and their political interests and discourses.…”

“…However, these studies offer little insight into the different ways in which civil society actors operate at local and international level to resist or sustain hegemonic formations. In other words, civil society is still a "black box" in terms of neo-Gramscian studies given that different civil society actors play different political roles, something that has not been explained or explored in detail as yet from this particular theoretical angle (Bommel & Spicer, 2011;Dellagnelo, Böhm, & Mendonça, 2014). …”