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To date, hydropower dams raise numerous interpretations about their impact on the Lancang-Mekong River. While most research studies analyze the negative aspects of hydropower development on people's livelihoods and local environments, the hydropower sector was historically one of the most iconic economic segments facilitating transboundary water cooperation for decades. By using the constructive discourse analysis and critical political ecology approach, the presented text (1) outlines the current environmental narratives over the Lancang-Mekong hydropower development and (2) explores the politicization of the Chinese mainstream dams. The data were collected upon the multi-level content analysis of relevant sources and double-checked with the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation and Conflict Database (LMCCD) monitoring over 4000 water-related events among six riparian countries between 1990 and 2021. Our data show that (i) there is a stark contrast in positive and negative narratives over the rapid hydropower development, (ii) the impact of mainstream dams on the river is more often discussed than that of tributary dams, (iii) implications of the hydropower dams are often interpreted upon the non-traditional research inputs rather than widely accepted studies, and (iv) developing the contradictory arguments through social and public media contributes to greater polarization of the multi-stakeholders' viewpoints in the accountable research dialogue.

This essay engages the colonial legacy of postwar Japan by arguing that the political cartoons produced as part of the postwar Japanese labor movement's critique of U.S. cultural hegemony illustrate how gendered discourses underpinned, and sometimes undermined, the ideologies formally represented by visual artists and the organizations that funded them. A significant component of organized labor's propaganda rested on a corpus of visual media that depicted women as icons of Japanese national culture. Japan's most militant labor unions were propagating anti-imperialist discourses that invoked an engendered/endangered nation that accentuated the importance of union roles for men by subordinating, then eliminating, union roles for women. (Crit Asian Stud/GIGA)

This paper will look at the concept of de-Europeanisation through the prism of the official relations between the EU representatives and the political elites in two countries – Bulgaria and Serbia. Here de-Europeanisation is defined as a process of deterioration of the quality
of integration or more simply as 'it is worse than it was'. The article begins with a critical overview of the dominant theoretical approaches to enlargement Europeanisation. Then, from a theoretical perspective, the article explores the role of EU legitimisation for national political elites.
While distinguishing between revolutionary and opportunistic legitimisation, the paper highlights the former, based on Bulgaria and Serbia. Going beyond the liberal political narrative of democratic backsliding in Central Europe, the article will approach critically the dominant Europeanisation
assumption of the unequivocally positive effect of European integration on national political elites. Particularly, it will examine the relevance of the argument that in the case of rule of law and human rights, the existing formal Europeanisation not only does not lead to informal Europeanisation
of the states, but it can also have a reverse effect through the preservation of pathological political practices and their infusion into the process of European integration. The research will use a qualitative method of analysis to juxtapose the official EU/nation state political elites'
rhetoric with political practices at the national level in the context of rule of law and human rights. Based on the findings, the paper argues that the EU oriented institutionalised perspective of Europeanisation omits important interactions on a micro-level that lead to the accommodation
of political practices contradictory to EU's fundamental political values. While these practices survive in the peripheries of the integration process, they have the potential to multiply and eviscerate the fundamental political practices and thus the EU's political system.

[spa] Este estudio analiza los discursos y prácticas de formación ciudadana que se dinamizan en la configuración de la subjetividad de las infancias en el contexto carcelario colombiano, en particular, en el Centro de Reclusión de Mujeres El Buen Pastor de Bogotá. Mediante tres categorías esenciales de análisis, ciudadanía, infancia y subjetividad, se indagan las posibilidades que esta etapa primordial de la vida ofrece a los niños y niñas de cero (0) a tres (3) años de edad, en su formación como sujetos de derechos, construcción de sociedad, objeto de develamiento de la infancia invisibilizada y configuración de subjetividades en sociedades disciplinares. En este sentido, desde los estudios clásicos de autores que brindan una mirada histórica sobre las tres categorías señaladas, se destacan, entre otros, para la categoría infancias Philippe Ariès (1996) y Mariano Narodowski; para la categoría ciudadanía Miquel Martínez (2010), Guillermo Hoyos (2010) y Adela Cortina (1998- 2010); para la categoría subjetividad Jorge Martínez (2009-2014) y Michel Foucault (2009; 1998; 1994). A nivel metodológico, se examinan los modos como los discursos gubernamentales e institucionales, así como los discursos y las prácticas de los distintos actores vinculados con los hijos e hijas de las reclusas, construyen la trama de significados y comprensiones sobre ciudadanía, infancias y subjetividades que se configuran en prisión. Con base en un enfoque que asume el análisis crítico del discurso como práctica social, desde autores como Van Dijk (1999) y Ruth Wodak (1997; 2003) como fuente de inspiración y fundamentación, que a la luz del análisis de los enunciados y producciones discursivas en un contexto histórico develan intenciones políticas, relaciones de poder y elementos de tensión y conflicto. ; [eng] In this research are analyzed the discourse and the perform of civil education that encourages the configuration of the subjectivity of the childhood in a Colombian prison system context, more specifically in the prison for women called "El Buen Pastor de Bogotá". Through three essential categories of analysis; citizenship, childhood and subjectivity, it will be inquired about the possibilities that this main stage of life offers to the children from age 0 to 3, in their education as individuals with rights, part of the construction of society, object of the unnoticed childhood unveiling and configuration of the subjectivities in the disciplinary societies. In this sense, from the author's classic researches that provide a historical look about the three categories mentioned before, are emphasized, among others, Philippe Aries (1996) and Mariano Narodowski for childhood categories; Miquel Martínez (2010), Guillermo Hoyos (2010) and Adela Cortina (1998-2010) for citizenship category and Jorge Martínez (2009-2014) and Michel Foucault (2009; 1998; 1994), for subjectivity categories. At the methodological level, government and institutional discourses are reviewed, as well as the discourses and practices of different actors involved with sons and daughters of prisoners, build the plot of meanings and comprehensions about citizenship, childhood and subjectivities that are configured in prison. Based on an approach that assumes the critical analysis of the discourse as a social practice, authors such as Van Dijk (1999) and Ruth Wodak (1997;2003), sources of inspiration and substantiation that in the light of the analysis of the statements and discursive productions in a historical context, unveil political intentions, power relationships just like tension elements and conflict

Since the Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Belmont Report, the military environment has been a testing ground for scientific research and for increasingly urgent ethical debates regarding the multifaceted legal status of various military and non-military physicians and patients. In particular, military medical physicians, who work in complicated situations and environments - ranging from combat to humanitarian zones - could be called upon to make life-changing and potentially controversial decisions with significant bioethical implications. Because this category of health professionals pertains to military institutions, it is positioned along the blurred line between the Hippocratic aspirations and safeguarding of medical practice and the requirements of military culture. From a linguistic perspective, these professionals adhere to military communication and its specific language, genres and means of knowledge dissemination, thus calling discourses of power into play. Therefore, to investigate how the military community defines and disseminates information on the activity of its medical professionals, as well as face possible bioethical conflicts and challenges, the Defense Health Board's 2015 Ethical Guidelines and Practices for US Military Medical Professionals will be analyzed based on a Critical Discourse Analysis approach sustained by qualitative data, thus underlining the clear contrast between civilian and military communicative patterns, medical practices and founding principles, which reflect military and non-military cultural differences. ; Since the Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Belmont Report, the military environment has been a testing ground for scientific research and for increasingly urgent ethical debates regarding the multifaceted legal status of various military and non-military physicians and patients. In particular, military medical physicians, who work in complicated situations and environments - ranging from combat to humanitarian zones - could be called upon to make life-changing and potentially controversial decisions with significant bioethical implications. Because this category of health professionals pertains to military institutions, it is positioned along the blurred line between the Hippocratic aspirations and safeguarding of medical practice and the requirements of military culture. From a linguistic perspective, these professionals adhere to military communication and its specific language, genres and means of knowledge dissemination, thus calling discourses of power into play. Therefore, to investigate how the military community defines and disseminates information on the activity of its medical professionals, as well as face possible bioethical conflicts and challenges, the Defense Health Board's 2015 Ethical Guidelines and Practices for US Military Medical Professionals will be analyzed based on a Critical Discourse Analysis approach sustained by qualitative data, thus underlining the clear contrast between civilian and military communicative patterns, medical practices and founding principles, which reflect military and non-military cultural differences.

Taina Saarinen tarkasteli väitöskirjassaan laadun ja eurooppalaisen korkeakoulupolitiikan erilaisia merkityksiä. Millaista korkeakoulupolitiikkaa laadun nimissä on viime vuosikymmeninä tuotettu ja pidetty yllä, ja keiden toimijoiden tarpeita tämä laadun politiikka tukee?- Laatu on tyhjä taulu, johon voidaan heijastaa erilaisia käsityksiä halutusta korkeakoulupolitiikasta, Saarinen määrittelee.Saarinen osoittaa, että ei ole olemassa vain yhtä laatupolitiikkaa vaan useita. Näennäisesti samaan politiikkaan kohdistuu eri tilanteissa erilaisia odotuksia, ja kukin toimintaympäristö on erilainen. Tämä väistämättä taas vaikuttaa politiikkatoimien vastaanottoon. Koulutuksen globalisaatio ei olekaan yksiselitteistä, vaan kansallisvaltiolla on edelleen – ainakin toistaiseksi – mahdollisuus omanlaiseensa koulutuspolitiikkaan. ; The study analysed higher education policy from the point of view of quality as a discursively constructed higher education policy phenomenon. Theoretically, the aim was to investigate (higher education) policy as a discursive process. Methodologically, the study applied discourse analytical methods in the study of higher education policy texts. The practical purpose of the study was to learn more about current European higher education policies from the point of view of quality and quality policy in higher education. The data consisted of higher education policy documentation from Finland, the European union, the OECD and the Bologna process. The analysis concentrated on the occurrences of quality. A Critical Discourse Analytical frame was applied. In a series of five articles, quality as a concept is examined by drawing on different textual approaches.Quality is mostly taken for granted and it is presented as a self-evident good in present European higher education policies. This might suggest an argumentative tactic to persuade the reader that quality and the activities connected to it are shared, common understanding.Some metaphors refer, for instance, to quality as some kind of force-of-nature, others to its fragile nature and the consequent need for regulation and control. As an evasive concept, quality receives meanings by the operationalisations attached to it. Also, different actors are presented in different ways in the context of quality.Historically, the word quality is practically not used in policy texts until the turn of the 1980s. This might imply that the quality of higher education was either held self-evident, or it was considered to be a marginal concern of the academic community. The dominant values seem to be those of the economy, competition, and regulation. The voice of the academic community is more subdued, and consequently, its values less clearly presented.(Critical) discourse analysis is helpful in raising issues, and making visible policy processes, their development and the values and power relations behind them. In the future, this approach could benefit from complementing it with analyses of situations where policy makers, administrators and the academics engage with these discourses.

Conspiracy theories are not new to religion, nor an exclusively modern phenomenon. But they take on more destructive and wide-ranging impact with modern communication technologies. Looking at the root psychosocial mechanisms of conspiracy theories, we argue that they frame ideas, history, and culture through the cognitive mindscape of special, 'hidden knowledge'. They also serve as a unifying theory of conflict and narration of history. The COVID epidemic has strained the economic and political system. Although it may be a matter of perception for Q-followers, a sense of precarity is enhanced by QAnon, thus unleashing and mustering an awakening for such extremist paranoid discourse of ressentiment. This parallels the cognitive mindscape of 'the Great Replacement'. Prior to election 2020, QAnon's base had been growing in Evangelical communities. Its presence continues to be felt.

Examined here is the claim that agrarian populism can be – and is currently – progressive, a view evaluated in relation to recent pro-peasant/farmer-first accounts of rural mobilization in Russia at the start of the 20th century and India at its end. Against this it is argued that agrarian populism cannot be regarded as progressive, for two reasons in particular. First, it overlooks or downplays the fact that capitalism requires of peasant households only their labour-power, as components of an increasingly global industrial reserve army. Opposed merely to certain forms of capitalism (foreign, large-scale) and not to accumulation per se, populists were and are unable to address this contradiction. And second, agrarian populism unleashes – or, once unleashed, endorses – discourses about the innateness of national/ethnic/religious difference associated historically and currently with the political right.

This essay contends that the digital debates over Islamophobia show a curious resemblance to pre-existing American folk theories of racism. The outcry surrounding the reality show All-American Muslim is the case study, but the argument applies to a broader development of cultural racism and Islamophobia in American society. Starting from a discussion of the politics of racialization and 'post-civil rights' racism in the USA, the article outlines the mediation of racial politics through reality television and online commenting in relation to Islamophobia. Finally, appropriating the work of Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and Jane Hill on the underlying theories of American racism, I examine two seemingly opposing discourses entailed in the AAM controversy, and demonstrate that the entire online outcry has closely followed the old paradigms through which Americans talk about racism.

Can consumers be socially responsible? Can the interests of consumers, corporations, and the overall society be reconciled? Traditionally, sociologists have conceptualized consumerism as enhancing individual wellbeing at the expense of moral citizenship. Yet throughout US history, popular discourse has linked consumption to the social good. Business schools currently expound this belief in their 'principles of marketing' courses. Popular textbooks promote 'relationship management marketing' which teaches students to target their most profitable customers, develop life-long relationships with them, and promote the societal concerns that they care about. The textbooks maintain that corporations are well-equipped to address the societal concerns of profitable customers through the use of cause marketing, granted minimal government interference. We describe this worldview as 'neoliberal consumer citizenship' and discuss its implications for social theory and a democratic society.

This article critically interrogates how colorblind racial ideology and the disadvantage thesis, a common explanation for immigrant entrepreneurship, rhetorically inform one another. I interview 81 representatives of Korean banks and seven US federal government institutions to determine how they explain the concentration of Korean immigrants in USA-based entrepreneurship. Consistent with the sociological literature, I find that respondents cite disadvantage as the main reason for Korean immigrants' over-representation in small business ownership. Also consistent with the literature are respondents' emphases on Koreans' group-level characteristics as mediating factors against disadvantage. I analyze how three dimensions of colorblind racial ideology are embedded in respondents' discourse; these three dimensions include the minimization of the role of racial ideologies and major institutions in shaping socioeconomic patterns, the promotion of cultural racism, and the incorporation of Asian Americans into a universal immigrant paradigm.

The Enron collapse in 2001 represented a high-water mark in the recent round of corporate scandals in the United States. In response to this crisis, the US government introduced the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (Act or SOX) in July 2002. Until now, the debates have remained silent on the political and social dimensions of the Act. By situating the discourse of corporate governance within the context of capitalist society, I offer an alternative explanation of the role and significance of SOX. I argue that the pre-eminence of the corporate governance framework explains away the deeper causes of crisis by maintaining our focus on the symptoms, such as greed on the part of corporate executives, lack of transparency and an absence of accountability, as opposed to the structural causes connected to neoliberal-led restructuring of capitalist society and the contradictions therein.

My focus in this paper is on cultural and political mobilization centered on irua ria atumia in the anti-colonial struggles of Kenya's Gĩkũyũ ethnic group. While a currently hegemonic eradication discourse presents female genital practices as proof of these women's oppression and domination, the history presented here conversely demonstrates that irua should be presented as a means of empowerment and resistance. Irua ria atumia instilled a cultural ethic of courage among Gĩkũyũ women, and a rallying cause in struggles against British rule when officials attempted to ban the practice. By presenting this colonial history of political struggle associated with irua ria atumia na anake, I emphasize the importance of avoiding seeing cultural practices in terms of domination and conformity, but rather as site of multiple possibilities where individuals and groups as agents actively invent and reinvent themselves strategically.