Posts tagged ‘Crisis’

Multiple crisis and Discursive Political Studies

Paper presented by Amelie Kutter at the DVPW convention in September 2024. Current diagnoses of crisis often use the term ‘polycrisis’ (Tooze, 2023) to refer to the multiplicity and interdependence of crisis phenomena that seem to characterise contemporary societies. This paper explores the contribution that Discursive Political Studies (DPS, Kutter 2020b) can make to the study of the politics of crisis and, more specifically, polycrisis. Their potential can be exploited by re-considering the different theories of meaning constitution (or: theories of discourse) that they offer. Combined with insights from a review of theories of crisis, they can guide a thorough discourse analysis of crisis.

Kutter, A., Barnickel, C., & Dück, E. (2022). Editorial. Covid-19 and the reconfiguration of the political

This editorial introduces to the collection of blog posts on discourses of Covid-19 that were published in the first special issue of the Crisis Discourse Blog. The authors of the blog posts explore the repercussions the pandemic has had on ‘the political’, on what constitutes our political struggle and political identities in the pandemic era. They observe that Covid-19 has left a legacy in the ways in which we communicate, do and imagine politics.

Crisis and crisis narratives in Southwest Europe. Workshop for participants of the regional meeting of Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes

In the past decade, societies in France, Italy, Portugal and Spain have gone through mutiple crisis. The recent pandemic further aggravates calamities that were already visible during the financial and Eurozone crisis: social inequalities, dysfunctions in national systems of social security and health provision, political instability and non-sustainable economies. At the same time, the Covid-19 pandemic markes a shift in policies of crisis management: on both national and European levels, policy-makers have departed from austerity and agreed on stimulus programmes, instead. This workshop explores reasons for this policy shift and the role, crisis narratives play in making that shift more or less possible.

Authors’ workshop on the special issue ‘Covid 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

(Deutsch) 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.

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

Talk given by Amelie Kutter and Gesine Lenkewitz at the 7th CADAAD conference
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

Talk given by Amelie Kutter at the 7th CADAAD conference
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.