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The aim of this chapter is to bring to the forefront the potential of discourse analysis in higher education research. It characterises discourse analysis as a constructionist perspective, underlying its empirical applications in the field of higher education. A two-phase model is proposed as a possible answer to the often stressed lack of methodological devices in the area of discourse analysis. This model combines the theory of discourse of Laclau and Mouffe with the critical discourse analysis of Fairclough, on the assumption that they have complementary elements that may be employed for research in the field of higher education. We selected a text to exemplify the use of discourse organisers (phase one) and to analyse the way discourses become dominant/excluded (phase two). We conclude by arguing that higher education research looking into discourses has major advantages to consider discourse analysis, both as a theory and method.

Purpose – This chapter examines the campaign, election and governance of Antonio Villaraigosa as Los Angeles’ first Latino mayor in over 130 years. The intersection of electoral coalitions, governing regimes, political incorporation, and deracialized/racialized campaign methods has wide-ranging implications for 21st century urban and racial politics. This study seeks to better understand the high expectations placed upon minority mayors as they develop policies and programs that benefit minorities and others as well.Method – This chapter employs the case study method. A form of qualitative research grounded in theory, scientific in nature, and investigative in approach. The examination of official city documents, archives of local newspapers, exit poll data, and select interviews join to make a rigorous ethnography. The data were complemented by the use of racial politics as a lens through which to interpret results.Findings – This chapter provides empirical insights about the realities of racial politics, the impact of extreme demographic shifts, and the prospects for coalition formation. Governance and resource allocation among minorities by minorities may be the challenge of the 21st century. Deracialized/racialized campaigns and elections make governing a difficult proposition. Even when broad progressive movements are underway (shared ideology) those arrangements seem much more fragile when long-term alliances cannot be forged.Research implications – This chapter applies the case study method. This approach uses the researcher as the primary tool of data collection and employs rigorous methods to avoid bias and ensure accuracy of data. However, because of the chosen approach, the research results may lack generalizability. Hence, we recommend further testing of the research propositions.Practical implications – This chapter posits implications for long-term coalition building and alliance formation among minority voters; the realities of race and representation; and a re-examination of governance style (“racialized” vs. “deracialized”) in municipal government.Originality/value – This chapter intersects urban and racial politics and purports to examine 21st century minority voting behavior and the impact of such behavior upon the policy process (policy responsiveness). Hence, can political incorporation be better achieved with the interests of minorities’ merged (universal interests)?

This article looks at corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a discursive social practice that attempts to interrogate the global market economy and its neoliberal underpinnings and that reflects as well as frames and shapes domestic and global politics and institutions. Drawing upon Karl Polanyi’s notions of reciprocity and redistribution while also emphasizing the normative content of the concept, the article inquires into the position that the CSR discourse occupies in addressing the corporate transnational risks derived from social tensions and conflicts and more generally, in answering social expectations for justice. The Polanyian perspective highlights the CSR discursive quest for a missing conceptual consistency and implicitly, for a constructive “critical” core. From this perspective, the article shows CSR to reside within controversial conceptual boundaries; a discursive social practice that engages with the social aspiration of embedding market economy in society while it is also in need of reclaiming its critical core and its potential for social change.

This chapter seeks to make the case that emotions are central in organising in schools and that the way members of staff oversee their emotion processes is crucial to the legitimacy of the institution. The logic of the case is simple, as follows. There are three forms of affect: feelings, moods and emotions. Feelings and moods are affective states, the description of which depicts our inner world. Emotions are very different. They entail a process in which an event of some kind is experienced and appraised. This appraisal results in physiological responses, psychological changes and social responses, which entail actions. The emotion process creates a state of action readiness and a motivation to act. The actions are manifestations of power and they may influence those who experience them. Because actions influence, they are leadership actions and are therefore central to organising processes. Actions may have a high affective content and may be experienced as an individual ‘emoting’, which typically increases the significance of the action experienced by others. Emoting can therefore change the influencing effect of an action. We may seek to defend ourselves from actions with a high affective content by means of social defences, which can take various forms. The social actions resulting from the emotion process and emoting are subject to a whole range of ‘rules’: personal, interpersonal, institutional and cultural. How well members of the school staff understand and oversee – manage – that emotion process in relation to these rules is crucial to the legitimacy of schools as institutions.

This research provides accounting-ethics authors and administrators with a benchmark for accounting-ethics research. While Bernardi and Bean (2010) considered publications in business-ethics and accounting’s top-40 journals this study considers research in eight accounting-ethics and public-interest journals, as well as, 34 business-ethics journals. We analyzed the contents of our 42 journals for the 25-year period between 1991 through 2015. This research documents the continued growth (Bernardi & Bean, 2007) of accounting-ethics research in both accounting-ethics and business-ethics journals. We provide data on the top-10 ethics authors in each doctoral year group, the top-50 ethics authors over the most recent 10, 20, and 25 years, and a distribution among ethics scholars for these periods. For the 25-year timeframe, our data indicate that only 665 (274) of the 5,125 accounting PhDs/DBAs (13.0% and 5.4% respectively) in Canada and the United States had authored or co-authored one (more than one) ethics article.

This chapter will explore processes of decommodification of specific local foods in South Italy. The aim is to offer both conceptual and empirical reflections on the topic. On the one side, the attempt will be to show the centrality of the notion of ‘labour’ in theoretically understanding the perspective of decommodification. On the other side, empirical support will be given through the presentation of a case study in South Italy. It clearly emerges that these processes are induced, among other elements, by a return to the land after having had different social and working experiences in urban contexts.