Amelie Kutter

Posts tagged ‘Diskurs’

Polity-Construction or How the European Union is (De-)Legitimised: A Discursive Political Sociology Perspective

The paper, presented at the 28th Council for European Studies conference in Lisbon/ISCE on 29 July, 2022, introduces a ‘discursive political sociology perspective’ that combines the theory of meaning-constitution developed in linguistically informed discourse studies with Bour-dieusian political sociology and the political theory of polity-building. It shifts attention from outcome (legitimacy) to process (legitimation) and from identification with existing EU institutions to discourse practices that only establish the means of communicating and cognizing EU politics in its potential and postnational character.

Krisen und Krisennarrative in Südwesteuropa. Workshop für Teilnehmende des Regionaltreffens der Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes

In den vergangenen zwei Jahrzehnten haben die Gesellschaften Frankreichs, Italiens, Portugals und Spaniens umfassende Krisen durchlaufen. Die Corona-Pandemie markiert einen Wendepunkt im Krisenmanagement auf nationaler und europäischer Ebene: anstelle von Sparprogrammen legen Regierungen und die Europäische Union Investitionsprogramme auf, die auf soziale Absicherung, Wirtschaftssubventionen und Infrastrukturmodernisierung abzielen. Der Workshop ‚Krisen und Krisennarrative in Südwesteuropa‘ erkundet Gründe für diesen Politikwechsel. Er legt besonderes Augenmerk auf die Rolle von Krisennarrativen bei der Formulierung von Politiken des Krisenmanagements.

Authors‘ workshop on the special issue ‚Covid-19 crisis discourse‘ of the Crisis Discourse Blog

This call invites blog posts that investigate phenomena of recent crisis debate from a discourse-analytical angle. The call addresses discourse scholars and students of discourse studies, who currently research discourses of the Covid-19 pandemic and related aspects of multiple crisis and who specialise in a specific discourse approach. We invite researchers to share initial or consolidated insights of their ongoing work with the specialist community and the wider audience, preparing blog posts for the Crisis Discourse Blog.

Kutter, A. (2020) Construction of the Eurozone crisis: re- and depoliticising European economic integration

The Eurozone crisis is among recent developments that upset the European Union (EU) most profoundly and sparked unprecedented contestation. This article adopts a discursive notion of politicisation and the frame of Discursive Political Studies to investigate whether that moment of contestation re-politicised EU economic governance in substantive terms. It argues that, while emerging counter-narratives of crisis projected alternative scenarios of economic integration and established a practice of constructive EU critique, they were co-opted by the dominant mass-mediated story of a public debt crisis.

Kutter, A. (2020) Legitimation in the European Union: a discourse- and field-theoretical view

This book investigates how political authority and legitimacy is constructed in the postnational setting of the European Union. Drawing on the example of the EU constitutional debate, and the use of ‘EU constitutional speak’ in Polish and French broadsheets, more particularly, the book shows how claims for legitimacy transform while being transposed from the discourse field of multilateral negotiation to that of national media.

Mobilising for alternatives to EU austerity: SYRIZA’s narrative of the European financial and economic crisis

Vortrag von Amelie Kutter und Gesine Lenkewitz auf der 7. CADAAD Konferenz
The Eurozone crisis brought about a new form of party political opposition in Europe that is deeply critical of the current institutional setting of the EU and the EU’s approach to crisis management while, at the same time, generally supporting the European project. This paper investigates discourse practices employed by such ‘euroalternativist opposition’ (Fitzgibbon 2013), drawing on the example of statements (press releases, speeches and interviews) on EU crisis management addressed to international audiences by SYRIZA between the years 2009-2014.

Analysing crisis discourses: theories and strategies

Vortrag von Amelie Kutter auf der 7. CADAAD Konferenz
Since the financial crisis emerged in 2007, many projects and publications have been launched that discourse-analyse representations of crisis and crisis management in communications by various groups and organisations. This research has generated insights in recurrent features of crisis discourse, such as blame games, claims for extraordinary authority, or trends of normalisation. Crisis itself, however, is usually taken for granted and rarely subjected to theoretical consideration. The present paper suggests that theories of crisis that borrow from Marxist thought help to gain an understanding of crisis as a catalyst of social change and to conceptually focus analyses of crisis and its discursive construction.