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This article starts from the assumption that economic sociology, including Karl Polanyi’s work, can contribute fresh perspectives to regulation debates because it opens up new understandings of the nature of economic activity, a key target of legal regulation. In particular this article examines Polanyi’s idea that society drives regulation. For Polanyi the “regulatory counter-movement” is society’s response to the disembedding – in particular through the proliferation of markets – of economic out of social relationships. Section One of the article identifies three key challenges that arise from this Polanyian take on regulation for contemporary regulation researchers. First, Polanyi focuses on social norms restraining business behavior, but neglects social norms embedded in law as also shaping regulation. Second, he seems to imply a clear-cut conceptual distinction between “economy” and “society.” Third, his analysis sidelines the role of interest politics in the development of regulation.

Addressing the first of these three key challenges, Section Two of this article therefore argues that a Polanyian vision of “socialized” legal regulation should build on contemporary accounts of responsive law and regulation, which focus attention on social norms informing legal regulation. Section Three of this article tackles the second key challenge raised by Polanyi’s work for contemporary regulation researchers, that is, how to transcend a modernist perspective of “economy” and “society” as clearly demarcated, distinct fields of social action. It argues that discourse theory is an important alternative theoretical resource. Drawing on Laclau and Mouffe, the article suggests that understanding “economy” and “society” as performed by open and relationally constructed discourses helps to capture interconnections between “economy” and “society” that become particularly visible when we analyze how specific regulatory regimes work at a medium- and small-scale level. These points are further brought to life in Section Four through a discussion of the European Union (EU) regulatory regime for trade in risky, transgenic agricultural products, and in particular the current reform debates about the consideration of the “socioeconomic impacts” of such products.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a discourse analytical understanding of the political economy. The term “crisis” is an important label in recent discussion in political economy. Yet the genuine discursive dimension of “the crisis” and the multiple linguistic layers of the crisis discourse remains an open issue.

Realist perspectives usually believe in an external reality of crises independent of the language construction; in contrast, constructivist perspectives argue that a crisis is always the result of a socio-linguistic construction process. This contribution follows a critical-constructivist perspective, thereby taking into account powerful discursive actors which are able to “declare” a state in the world as a “crisis”.

From a discourse analytical point of view, this paper examines the rules and logics of crisis management policy, arguing that a new politico-academic elite has appeared which is beyond the classical distinction between “Keynesians” and “neo-liberals”. By taking a position in the discourse of the recent debate on financial regulation, these new elite might be able to manage the crisis for a particular time, as they are constructed as “moderating actors” through academic and political discourses.

From a practical point of view, this analysis cannot offer economic solutions; from an analytical viewpoint, it will not give insights into discursive contexts.

This analysis helps to understand current debates on economic policy and to improve the communicative efficiency of the participants.

This paper combines a discourse analysis with a governmentality perspective and applies this analytical tool onto a political and economic topic currently prevailing in the global political economy.

This paper aims to analyse contrasting discourses on education and competitiveness from four countries to show the different national values that are a key driver in economic development.

The paper uses content analysis to compare and contrast the newspaper discourse surrounding the OECD Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) in four countries with above OECD average performance: Japan and South Korea (improving performance) and Australia and Finland (declining performance). PISA has attracted much government and public attention because it reflects education and the economic value of that education.

There are key contrasts in the discourses of the four countries. Despite shifts to globalised perspectives on education, strong national and cultural differences remain. Educational competitiveness and economic competitiveness are strong discourses in Japan and South Korea, while in Australia and Finland, the focus is on educational competitiveness. The media in Finland has few references to economic competitiveness and it does not feature in Australia. The discourse themes on PISA from 2001 to 2015 are presented with trends in educational attainment and shifting national perspectives on education.

Analysis is limited to the top two circulation newspapers in English language in each country over 2001 to 2015. These newspapers in Finland, Japan and South Korea include translated content from local language papers.

The paper provides longitudinal perspectives to understand the contrasting societal values placed on education and how these relate to perspectives on competitiveness. This media evidence on national discourses can inform education policy orientations in the four countries examined.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the implementation of self-service at public libraries from the perspective of their users. The implementation of self-service is related to a diverse societal context including, for example, an overall digitalisation, budget constraints and political expectations on public libraries to contribute to marketing the local community.

Semi-structured interviews with users and observations have been undertaken at self-service libraries in the south of Sweden. The material is analysed by means of a theoretical framework consisting of previous critical LIS-research, Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis and Habermas’ theory of the colonisation of the life world.

The implementation of self-service is affecting the users’ library practices as well as their expectations on the library. These expectations are shaped by various and sometimes competing discourses.

To support public libraries’ role as democratic, public spheres, the complexity of the users’ understandings should be taken into consideration when implementing self-service.

The differing expectations articulated by the users, and the various discourses they can be related to, implicate a hegemonic struggle, corresponding to a changing view on public libraries.

The paper examines two discourses of bereavement that crystallized simultaneously in Israel as the third millennium began. One is “the economic discourse of bereavement,” with which official organizations dealing with bereavement sought to “free themselves” from the state's directives on entitlement to compensation. Army widows argued that compensation should not depend on their refraining from remarriage, while bereaved parents demanded it would not be contingent on a means test. They urge for liberation from “role demands” and for presenting entitlement to compensation as entitlement to personal rehabilitation, without using it to support pro-establishment behavior or unending interactions with establishment supervision. Those claims express the linkage of bereavement to globalization and individuation, and the desire to rebel against the republican equation conditioning entitlement to welfare on “proper” establishment-compliant behavior. A second discourse is the “hierarchy of bereavement discourse” – which was placed on the agenda together with the first one, and by the same organizations. Unlike the economic discourse, this one acted to replicate the monopoly held by families of IDF dead in the Israeli pantheon, with attempts to bring into it a group of families of civilian bereavement (families of terror victims). The discourse relies on purely republican underpinnings, complying with the spirit of the local–national period. Exploring the two discourses, that were promoted simultaneously by the same agents, assists an analysis of the Israeli discourse of bereavement that results in its definition as “glocal.” This transpires from a review of the literature showing that – even in the face of globalization processes – national–local foundations remained stable. The paper first engages with the concept of glocalization, the ethos of republican citizenship, and, as a facet of it, the identification of social policy as an agent of the social hierarchy, as well as changes in citizenship during globalization. The second section reviews the status of bereaved families, and the central discourses they have promoted in Israeli society. The third and major part contains an analysis of both discourses – the economic discourse of bereavement, and the hierarchy of bereavement discourse. Finally, we attempt to analyze and explain how apparently antithetical discourses took shape in tandem, drawing on the term “glocalism” and the impact of citizenship models.

This chapter presents and discusses the value of cultural political economy (CPE) as a theoretical framework for the analysis of the international governance of education. CPE is situated historically as a contemporary example of attempts within the Marxist tradition to explore the relations between the cultural (the world of discourse and practice), the political (actors and institutions), and the economic. The chapter builds on the developed account of CPE to address the challenges presented by the European Union (EU) as an example of international governance. Established accounts of the development of an EU role in the governance of education since the launch of the Lisbon Strategy in March 2000 are examined so as to establish what a CPE approach can offer to attempts to complement and transcend them. In conclusion, the chapter acknowledges the aspects of CPE that remain undeveloped and problematic as well as underlining the terms upon which the CPE as presented here might need to engage with other theoretical approaches.

Purpose – In this chapter we highlight the potential of critical and poststructural paradigms and associated qualitative research approaches for future research in strategy. In addition, we aim to contribute to the proliferation of applications of qualitative methodologies as well as to facilitate the diversity of qualitative inquiry approaches in the strategy field.

Methodology/Approach – Building on insights from standpoint theory, we discuss the importance and necessity of cultivating critical and poststructural paradigms in strategy. Furthermore, we review three related qualitative inquiry approaches (i.e., discourse analysis, deconstruction, and genealogy) and develop suggestions for their utilization in future strategy research on emerging market economies.

Findings – We highlight key concepts of critical and poststructural paradigms as well as of the selected approaches and provide a variety of examples relevant to strategy research to illustrate potential applications and analytic considerations.

Originality/Value of chapter – Critical and poststructural paradigms and related research methodologies are underutilized in strategy research; however, they are important contributions to paradigmatic and methodological diversity in the field generally and necessary approaches for developing our understanding of strategy phenomena in the context of emerging market economies specifically.

The study examines the responsibilisation of an ethnocentric consumer in commercial, meta-organisational discourses. In addition to nationalistic and patriotic discourses, the focus is on wider conceptualisations of consumer responsibility.

The paper uses critical discourse analysis as a methodological approach to conduct an empirical case study on the texts of two producer-driven labelling campaigns.

The campaign texts create possibilities for ethnocentric consumption with positioning, argumentative and classificatory discourses. Patriotic responsibilisation is emphasised, together with rationales to take action on environmental concerns.

The study highlights the responsibility of marketers over their corporate responsibility communication, suggesting that ethnocentric promotions may have the power to alter how consumers take action on various responsibility concerns.

The study surfaces the tensions that responsible consumption can entail for consumers. Indeed, nationalistic and patriotic discourses may alter our understanding of responsibility issues that may seem completely separate from the concepts of nationalism and patriotism.

The paper shows how different organisational texts are deployed to bring about the idea of ethnocentric consumption and how this relates to responsibility discourses, nationalism and patriotism.

This paper seeks to situate the green economy (GE) within the broader history of sustainable development (SD), bringing related lessons and insights into its fold.

We critically examine the history of SD, focusing on the relationship between SD outcomes and a variety of theoretical and political influences, such as demodernization theories, ecological modernization, neoliberalism, and state theory. We situate the GE within this broader history and identify emergent pathways to successful GE development.

We suggest that a strong GE discourse, one that prioritizes both people and the environment, provides an opportunity to revitalize the state, combat neoliberal primacy, and drive progressive economic and environmental policy.

A critical examination of SD history can provide important lessons for GE actors seeking progressive social and environmental change.

As social and environmental crises deepen, the need for developing and propagating discourses that engender economic reform and ecological protection becomes ever more evident.

The purpose of this paper is to offer an explanation of the predominance of austerity policies in Europe based on distinct crisis narratives and their underlying market metaphors in public speeches and addresses of German Chancellor Angela Merkel to a broader audience of economic decision-makers.

The author uses discourse and metaphor analysis of speeches and addresses of Angela Merkel in the aftermath of the crisis applying cognitive metaphor theory in combination with a corpus linguistic approach.

Dominant conceptual metaphors in Merkel’s crisis narrative subordinate policy-making to superior “market mechanisms”, which are attributed with human and natural characteristics. Moral focus of crisis narrative of “living-beyond-ones-means” forces austerity policies.

The analysis is restricted to public speeches of Merkel, whereas the impact on public discourses was not analyzed.

The paper offers an explanation for the prevalence of neoliberal policies in the Eurozone and the uneven balances of political power in public economic discourses.

Study of the role of “market metaphors” in crisis narratives of influential political leaders as well as an analysis of the impact of discursive manifestations and conceptual market metaphors for economic crisis policies.