Property as Interorganizational Discourse: Rights in the Politics of Public Spaces

Abstract

In this article, I extend organization and communication theory to conceptualize property as an interorganizational discourse. As an analytic of discourse’s capacity to gain and defend stakeholder rights in the public domain, property discourses provide a rigorous, language‐centered approach to organizational conflict over environmental spaces by conceptualizing how material–symbolic tensions play out diachronically. I ground this theoretical terrain through a discourse analysis of a decade‐long conflict over public lands in the southern part of the U.S. state of Utah. The case—Grand Staircase‐Escalante National Monument—constitutes a significant clash of politics between environmental preservation and extraction and especially what political regime ought to control roads accessing this 1.9‐million‐acre national monument. The analysis and interpretation indicate that property politics involve a complex interplay of symbolic and material forces among stakeholders. Conceptualized in this way property discourses provide considerable insight as many nations and societies face escalating struggles over increasingly scarce resources.

Articulating Identity In and Through Maine's North Woods

“…According to Cantrill, Thompson, Garrett and Rochester (2007), land-use changes can be major events that interrupt relationships to place, or senses of self-in-place. These changes may create a "sense of rupture, or a breach, or a violation," trigger identity conflicts, cause significant unrest, or alter institutional and social-ecological practices that define a community (Carbaugh, 1996, p. 159;Norton, 2008). Some changes may even prompt instability sufficient to re-make the social and physical context of the conflict itself, thus impacting the present and future state of the social-ecological system (SES), including identities, relations in place (Milstein, Anguino, Sandoval, Chen, & Dickinson, 2011), and cultural rules used for decision-making (Chibnik, 1981).…”

Situating Organizations in Politics

“…However, a growing body of research suggests a shift in this trend, including research of the U.S. Forest Service (Thackaberry, 2004), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Peterson & Horton, 1995), the BLM (Norton, 2008), and public participation structures (Senecah, 2004). Research on interorganizational politics can inform public, civic, and private entities as well as the interaction among these organizations in the policy domain.…”

“…Interorganizational politics challenges us to extend concepts such as participation in (Stohl & Cheney, 2001) to participation among organizations (Heath, 2007). This trend is evident in numerous literatures including empowerment (Turner, 2001), participatory decision making (Kinsella, 2004), challenges to bureaucratic legitimacy (Schwarze, 2004), valuation in political economy (Norton, 2008;Peterson & Peterson, 1996), and resource management given stakeholder knowledge (Mcglasnan & Williams, 2003).…”

“…environmental resource allocation processes are so complex that these deliberations almost always involve conflicts among multiple, often international stakeholders, which, in turn, unearths interorganizational contradictions. For example, the western portion of the United States generally supports small government (Norton, 2008); yet resource-dependent groups in these areas also strongly support significant expenditures for forest firefighting to continue the era of fire suppression (Paveglio & Norton, 2007). The control-resistance dialectic thus serves as a concept that is mutually relevant to both intra-and interorganizational studies and a focus point for the present study.…”

“…ashcraft and Mumby (2004;Mumby & ashcraft, 2006) provided entrée into this diachronic thesis in their examination of the way pilots' gendered performances shift given institutional exigencies for legitimacy. although their occupational focus is conceptually insightful, multistakeholder conflicts present a unique set of circumstances because they require interaction among multiple stakeholders in the management of jurisdiction (Blau, 1996), public resources (Norton, 2008), and distribution processes (Stone, 2001).…”