- Hansen points out that languages and the construction of identity is highly structured, but simultaneously inherently unstable. Why do you think this is the case?
- Does identity have a casual effect on the creation of policy? Does policy cause identity? Explain why or why not.
- What does Hansen mean by intertextuality, and how does she apply it to discourse analysis research with the three proposed models?
- Describe the different ways that, according to Hansen, the genres addressing foreign policy (policy texts, journalism, academic analysis, travel writing, and memoir) claim authority through constructing knowledge.
- Is formulation of a proper narrative of identity in ethnographic research important?
- How do you weight certain facets of identity in research? Do you think they are equally important to your research outcome?
Saturday, February 20, 2016
The Power of the Force: Discourse Analysis
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2. Does identity have a casual effect on the creation of policy? Does policy cause identity? Explain why or why not.
ReplyDeleteIdentity, in and of itself does not have a casual effect on the creation of policy. You cannot have a policy on just women or on just Black women or gay men. The Somera article points out that there are many identifies that a Black woman could fall under, such as sexual identity, socioeconomic status, marital status, etc. Identity is only one part of a person’s narrative and you cannot categorize someone based on one identity and create policy. Since policy will have to address more than one aspect of identity, I believe identity narratives have an effect on the creation of policy, such as policies targeting low income minority women. Therefore, identity alone does not have an effect on policy creation
3. Is formulation of a proper narrative of identity in ethnographic research important?
Yes, formulating a proper narrative ensures you are covering all areas of research. Once you formulate the narrative you have to ensure you are properly categorizing the identities. If your narratives are incorrect
4. How do you weight certain facets of identity in research? Do you think they are equally important to your research outcome?
There are many facets to identity. As Somera point out, identity is only part of the narrative, there is so much more that contributes to the narrative of a person. As a researcher, I think it’s important to tell the whole story. The facets of identity, when combined, makes up the narrative. I would weight those more very heavily, because then you will have a more complete picture, as opposed to picking out small innocuous things that may or may not actually contribute to the person’s story.
Does identity have a casual effect on the creation of policy? Does policy cause identity? Explain why or why not.
ReplyDeletePrior to this reading I didn’t see how policy could “cause” identity. Although I adhere to the constructivist definition of identities as social constructs that are fluid, I couldn’t think of instances in which policy actually created identities rather than just revitalizing and reinforcing already existing ones. For example, nationalistic policies reproduced in Western Europe may proliferate stronger affiliations to a German identity or a French identity, but these identities would not stop existing without these policies and were operating in social and political discourse long before. Similarly, foreign policy during the Bush Administration’s 2003 Gulf War played on and exacerbated many identities that led to Otherness, and maybe distorted the Sunni and Shia conflict to an extent, but Americans, Iraqis, Sunnis, and Shias had already existed. I think that foreign policy is definitely influenced by multiple identities operating in political discourses, but I wasn’t so convinced of the reverse causal relationship. However, the poststructuralist notion that identities are simultaneously a product of and the justification of foreign policy is very appealing. According to Hansen, the construction of identity and policy are linked within political discourses and are not necessarily separable, and for a causal relationship like this to be hypothesized a dependent and independent variable need to be identified. Further, foreign policy problems are not handled “de novo”, and their solutions are written into a “discursive” terrain that is already somewhat structured through previously articulated and institutionalized identities. Foreign policy is formulated within a social and political space, and at the center of political activity is the construction of a link between policy and identity that have to make the two look consistent in order to appear legitimate to its relevant audience. The construction of this link is also confronted by a set of external constraints that impact identity as well as policy. New identities may be created, for example, as result of a wave of immigration to a particular country and the policies a government chooses to respond to this activity. As was mentioned in class, Swedes now have a concept of what an “ethnic Swede” is, an identity which apparently did not exist before. Ultimately, I now think that the relationship between policy and identity is a self-reinforcing one, with identity influencing and creating foreign policy and vice versa.
What does Hansen mean by intertextuality, and how does she apply it to discourse analysis research with the three proposed models?
DeleteAn intertextual approach to foreign policy analysis suggests that a wider body of texts need to be used aside from the policy texts that stipulate official policy or chronicle its parliamentary or bureaucratic creation and implementation. These texts may include journalistic reportage, academic analysis, travel writing, autobiography, or even fiction and popular culture. For Hansen, official foreign policy discourse needs to be situated inside a larger “intertextual web’” that traces intertextual references to other texts, in the process bringing in sources that are constructed either as supporting influences or as texts that need to be reconsidered. Hansen proposes three research models for conducting intertextual analysis: 1) a model directly based on in foreign policy discourse and centers on political leaders with official authority to sanction the foreign policies pursued as well as those with central roles in executing these policies. It uses the text and other materials produced by these actors. The goal of this model is to investigate the constructions of identity within official discourse and how intertextual links stabilize this discourse. 2) Model 2 considers major actors and arenas within a wider foreign policy debate. The most significant discourses to consider are those of political oppositional parties, the media, and corporate institutions. The purpose is that it facilitates analysis of the discursive and political hegemony of a governmental institution and its capability to maneuver it. The actors and institutions of model 2 are all considered major players within the broader political debate and they are all explicitly concerned with foreign policy. 3) For Model 3, the scope of analysis includes material that does not explicitly engage official policy discourse, or material that is concerned with policy but has a marginal status. This model provides representations of foreign policy issues as they are articulated within “high” as well as “popular” culture and relates them to articulations within official foreign policy discourse. This analysis looks into whether popular representations reproduce or challenge those of official discourse and how these representations operate between the spheres of entertainment and politics.
1)I think that identities can be unstable because of the process of differentiating. Identities are often built on a false narrative of what one isn’t and by associating positive aspects to oneself while associating negative attributes to the “Other.” This creates a sort of binary that is not reflected in the real world. Like the example listed in the text, the socially constructed identity of being a man was to be different from, and superior to, a woman. It was to be rational and independent rather than being emotional and reliant. However, we know that this is not true and that people do not fit so cleanly into categories. This creates a sort of disassociation that can make identities unstable and susceptible to change.
ReplyDelete2)I agree with Hansen’s and the poststructuralist assertion that “foreign policies rely upon representations of identity, but it is also through the formulation of foreign policy that identities are produced and reproduced.” In other words, identity does not cause policy and policy does not cause identity. Rather, policy and identity are mutually reinforcing and cannot be separated from each other. For instance, one aspect of the American identity is a belief in individual freedom and the value of democracy. It would be an oversimplification to say that these are the only tenets driving foreign policy, but we do see these ideas listed as justification for foreign intervention time and again. The US has intervened military in order to prevent the spread of communism or to dislodge dictators. Even our diplomatic efforts encourage respect for individual rights and economic policies that favor free markets and individual opportunity. In turn, when these policies are enacted, it reinforces the American identity as a leader of the free world.
Hansen points out that languages and the construction of identity is highly structured, but simultaneously inherently unstable. Why do you think this is the case?
ReplyDeleteThe concept of language and identity as highly structured but inherently unstable is represented with clarity through the subject of the ‘woman’ in 19th century Europe. The identity of women was emotional, motherly, reliant, and simple. This identity was contrasted with that of ‘man’, who was intellectual, independent, complex, and rational. This identity was highly structured and gave ‘woman’ a place and relation to ‘man’. This identity was instituted and made possible through language. Language enabled these ideas and concepts to be continuously renewed which upheld the structure of this identity. Over time, the identity of ‘woman’ has moved from being social to the realm of the political and as such the identity of ‘woman’ has been subject to many contestations through women’s rights movements. The inherently unstable nature of language can also be seen in light of this example. Through contestation, identity and language have proven to be unstable as they undergo change. An example which comes to mind in reading the inherently unstable nature of language is the meaning of the word ‘vulnerable’. Traditionally, this word’s meaning was related to fortifications where vulnerability was seen as weakness. This word could also be applied choices or relationships, whereby being vulnerable was achieved through lack of proper planning and a choice or relationship deemed vulnerable was highly subject to failure. In recent years, however, the word vulnerable has taken on a different meaning whereby one who allows oneself to be vulnerable is allowing oneself to grow by not shutting out outside influence. This interpretation and use of vulnerable is highly positive and actually construed as a strength, whereby one who cannot make oneself vulnerable is in fact a weak person, lacking the strength to be open to change.
Does identity have a causal effect on the creation of policy? Does policy cause identity? Explain why or why not.
Identity does have a causal effect on the creation of policy, but policy also helps in the the creation of identity. The example was put forth where the Bush presidency validated their push to go to war with Iraq through the framing of the situation in terms that would allow the American identity to ‘permit’ the invasion of Iraq. By framing Iraq as divided against itself, with Saddam Hussein on the one side wielding power against the wishes of the Iraqi people who were in need of liberation, the war was framed in such a way as to appeal to the American identity of freedom and democracy. In this way, through manipulation, so to speak, of the American identity, policy could be put into effect. Policy also contributes to identity. In thinking about the Iraq war, the policies that got us involved in that debacle also resulted in an impact on the American identity in relation to other nations on the world stage. The core identity of a freedom loving nation purporting democracy has stayed, but those policies changed aspects of that identity. Through fundamentally bad policy, the US has come, in many ways, to be seen as the ‘world police’ and the perpetrator of lethal buffoonery on the world stage. While policy enacted during the current presidency has helped to improve the image of the US, it has not entirely alleviated the reputation and legacy of President Bush.
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ReplyDelete5) I think it is difficult to say abstractly whether narrative of identity is important. I think Sommers provides an interesting approach for collecting and disseminating research through narrative. It opens new opportunities to explain and understand shifting dynamics and relationships, but I do not think it in and of itself is important. I think it is just another method or channel through which one can digest the social world.
ReplyDeleteSommers states “narrative identity approach assumes people act in particular way because not to do so would fundamentally violate their sense of being…” [sic]. While, we may agree with these assumptions and find similar assumptions in all types of research, it does not trivialize its importance. In fact, the assumption makes the narrative approach both powerful and limiting. I think the narrative of identity greatly contributes to the field of ethnography and is important in that regard, but I do not think it is important on its own to the field.
6) My area of interest is in the intersection of informal and formal security sectors, especially in transitioning states. More specifically, I am interested in community policing as a strategy for integrating the two often-opposing sectors. However, the idea of community policing itself is a, primarily, US and UK strategy of policing. So perhaps I am trying to impose my own notions.
I think there are a number of identities that interplay with one another when it comes to communities, and the informal and formal security sectors. There are cultural norms and narratives, not just for the communities and informal security sectors like warlords or tribal security mechanisms, but also for police and other large organizations or bureaucracies. A lot of research as gone into organizational identity, culture and psychology. I think my research may have to include these identities. It would be also important to understand how each groups see themselves in the dynamics of the transitioning state and how it interprets the changes. This may be part of the relational settings.
However, all groups—police, communities, and informal security sectors—are often resistant to change especially if they think their interests or identity are at risk. So, it is important to understand the cultural sources of influences, and how the units within view themselves in the larger structure, apparatus, or community. I am not sure how to weight each variable of these identities, because sometimes they may overlap, but I do not think they are all equally important. So much will depend on where the research takes me.
1. Hansen points out that languages and the construction of identity is highly structured, but simultaneously inherently unstable.
ReplyDelete“The worst thing one can do with words is to surrender to them. If language is to be an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought one must let the meaning choose the word and not the other way about” (George Orwell cited on Brubaker & Cooper, 2000)
According to Brubaker and Cooper (2000) “identity” tends to mean too much and too little when understood in the strong sense or too little when understood in a weak sense or nothing at all because of its sheer ambiguity. The notion of “identity” is cross-cutting in the sense that there are certain layers of identity that are constructed, fluid, fixed, multiple; there are instances of where identity is salient and not. Hansen pointed out that the foundation of the concept of identity is that it is inherently a relational phenomenon. Whatever its indispensability in certain practical contexts, “identity” is a key subjective variable for social scientists. There are certain dimensions of identity that are unique to the individual and group and there are also others putatively universal.
Foucalt’s post structuralism deconstruction destroyed the view of the self as identical and fixed. This discourse brought the view of differences and plurality as the self, in this context, was no longer the source knowledge but the product of its networks of power and discourse. Identity is a contingent product of social or political action and as a ground or basis of further action. It is both a category of practice (Bordieu) and categories of social and political analysis. Language as a marker of identity evolve with particular socio-demographic niche and some social factors influence its structure, which creates unstable systems of signs that generate meaning. This brings the issues in relation to “identity” and “interests.” Identity as articulated in narratives can be manipulated politically so as to serve a purpose and those who are manipulated may not even be conscious of it. For instance, the “woman” in the 19th century was not allowed to participate in politics. Their role as a mother and an embodiment of the nation did not give them the freedom to do so rather hindered their agency. Today, we find the same story in India among the untouchables who are banned from temple or having access to resources because they are women who gave birth or is menstruating or lost a father and so on. Furthermore, with notion of security being at the very core of every nation, the state is the manager of symbols representing identity through the different categorization and identification of its subjects—passport, finger prints and other biometrics. In general, as Hansen (2006) describes it identities are constructed by way of legitimizing the policy proposed.
2. Is formulation of a proper narrative of identity in ethnographic research important?
In ethnographic research, the researcher generally selects a research setting and spends ample time by immersing oneself in the context so as to get the data to base the analysis. Such analysis is interpretive in search of meaning than verifiable prediction as Geertz (1973) put it, “that what we call our data are really our own construction of other people’s construction of what they and their compatriots are up to.” In doing so, ethnographers often look for key indicators when researching identity—“boundaries; changes in and contestation over boundaries and contents they encapsulate; and narratives that express implicit or explicit cognitive content of a group’s identity.” While using these indicators, however, unless the researcher formulates the proper narrative by applying triangulation methods and what Somers call the “categorically destabilizing dimensions of time, space and relationality” it is possible to reach to a wrong conclusion whereby some aspects of identity are set in a misleading entity.
Is formulation of a proper narrative of identity in ethnographic research important?
ReplyDeleteA proper narrative of identity in ethnographic research is highly important. Narrativity helps us understand that the objects of our research such as identities do not exist in an independent realm of being. They are temporal, spatial and relational entities which are being produced and reproduced throughout time, gaining meanings through intersubjective relations. As a result, it is important to understand these ontological and epistemological underpinnings of the nature of narrative identities, if we are to inquire about them. This interpretation of narrative identities will allow us to work in a framework where we can carry out our ethnographic researches as best as we can, as we will be able to pinpoint various identities and their ascribed meaning to individuals much better by taking into account their temporal, spatial, relational and intersubjective characteristics.
For example, we can better discern the actions of certain groups or individuals using the narrative identity framework rather than focusing on fixed understanding of different social categories such as social classes, or social forces. Instead of relating the actions of an individual directly to her social class and analyzing her behaviors from that framework, a narrative identity approach would prove much more insightful, since identities by nature are not fixed, and are intersubjective and relational.
Does identity have a casual effect on the creation of policy? Does policy cause identity? Explain why or why not.
Identity, according Hansen, is not a fixed ahistorical social category but it is something that is temporally and spatially created by subjects that ascribe certain meanings towards it, where these meanings are usually chosen, consciously or unconsciously, by a method of differentiation relative to an Other. This creation of an identity and its ever so changing meaning is influenced by the creation of a policy that revolves around this identity as well. As a result, in a given time and space, the given relational nature between an identity and policy will co-create their particular meanings. One does not create the other one, since one can’t effectively exist without the other. They ascribe meanings to each other given their relational context and discursive frameworks. It is stated that, “The adoption of a discursive epistemology implies that the poststructuralist analytical focus is on the discursive construction of identity as both constitutive of and a product of foreign policy”. This means that identities and policies are constructed in a relational nature and they influence the meanings the other one has in a discursive framework. That is why we can’t claim the existence of a causal effect on the creation of an identity or a policy.
Hansen explains this as such; “‘The impossibility of causality’ returns to the question of causality and argues that it is impossible to conceptualize the relationship between identity and foreign policy in terms of causal effects and that one cannot, as a consequence, formulate hypotheses about the (relative) explanatory power of discourse as opposed to material explanations”.
Is formulation of a proper narrative of identity in ethnographic research important?
ReplyDeleteMargaret Somers, in her essay, describes narrative and narrativity as “concepts of social epistemology and social ontology.” Theorists have argued that it is through narrativity that we make sense of the social world and through which we constitute our social identities. I think it is extremely important to formulate a narrative of identity in ethnographic research because the job itself involves directly interacting with people in certain situations so as to gain an understanding of their world from an insider’s perspective. This understanding can only be gained by understanding how they have formulated their identities over time. Every individual, like Sombers explains, has stories that guide his/her actions. They form a sort of identity with regard to where they are placed in this story and the whole point of ethnographic research is to uncover this implicit cultural knowledge that guides behavior in a particular group. Because ethnography involves interacting with community members and understanding their stories, it is important to formulate a narrative of identity because it will enable the researcher to discern the meaning of any single event in the life of the subject in relationship to other events.
How do you weight certain facets of identity in research? Do you think they are equally important to your research outcome?
Sombers mentions various facets of identity in research such as poverty, class, ethnicity, race, sexual identity, and age. I think the importance of each can be weighed based on the question/puzzle that the research aims to answer. However, so as to not end up getting biased results, a researcher needs to make sure that one facet of identity doesn’t end up dominating the findings. Somers brings this point up wherein she says a single facet of identity, for instance gender, “could over-determine any number of cross- cutting differences such as race and class.” This could do disservice to the subject of study by attributing one single factor of identity to a much more complex and complicated issue. Sombers gives the example of feminists of color who charge that feminist identity-theories focusing on gender oversimplify the situation, which has to do with a lot more complex factors.