‘The Swedish model’ is a term which has a long history in the Swedish political debate. In recent years, the term has often been contested in terms of what it actually means; it has even been accused of being inherently meaningless. The purpose of this thesis is thus to examine how meaning is constructed in relation to the Swedish model through examining statements by the party leaders of the two biggest Swedish parties, the Social Democrats and the Moderates, during 2009, 2014 and 2018. Through applying aspects of the theoretical framework laid out by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe to articulations of the Swedish model in party leader debates in the Swedish parliament, chains of equivalence and discourses centered around nodal points are constructed. A distinction can be drawn between several discourses, the threats to the model that they emphasize, and their construction of liberty and safety in relation to the Swedish model.

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An examination of scholarly work on nationalism reveals that the nation is typically defined on the basis of positivistic understandings of human nature or society. Consequently, it is understood, not in term of its own specificity, but in terms of an underlying referent that is thought to engender it. Since the unity of the nation is attributed to a “privileged” cause, the plurality of forms that co-constitute it are underemphasized. Positivist explanations have therefore obfuscated the extent to which “the nation” and “nationalism” come to be diversely imbricated in the social and political fabric, and how the nation comes to be totalized, in light of the plurality of its constitutive forms and subject positions. The present work deconstructs existing theories of nationalism, while seeking to generatively furnish a theory of nationalism that eliminates all reliance on positivism. Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of hegemony, which sees socio-political blocs as discursive terrains of multiple overdetermined forms and relations, is deployed in these efforts. Therefore, nationalism is understood, not in terms of privileged constituents, but as a variable set of overdetermined “family resemblances,” such as, “the nation,” “the state,” “the military,” “tradition,” etc., that come to represent the national communal totality. These “family resemblances” come to be dispersed variably and unevenly, as privileged nodes in the field of overdetermination, “binding” together differential identities. And since what governs any discursive formation is the uneven play of differences, it follows that a particular identity will have saturated, more than any other, the field of overdetermination and the content of nodal signifiers (e.g., “the nation”) with its narratives, thereby establishing its hegemony. “The nation” can thus be understood as a privileged signifier of historically variable content that, through its general and uneven dispersion, fuses but unevenly privileges, multiple identities into a socio-political bloc. / Graduate / 2019-06-14

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-12T23:13:41Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 arquivo3384_1.pdf: 867123 bytes, checksum: fe89fdad5938f4de78df413d813c856a (MD5) license.txt: 1748 bytes, checksum: 8a4605be74aa9ea9d79846c1fba20a33 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / Neste trabalho buscamos investigar continuidades e descontinuidades da tradição marxista no pós-marxismo de Ernesto Laclau e Chantal Mouffe. Tomamos como ponto de partida a identificação de conceitos e formas discursivas oriundos do marxismo que são prolongados na transição para o enfoque pós-marxista. Para tanto, discutimos, primeiramente, a complexidade intrínseca à idéia de tradição marxista em diferentes momentos de sua história. Essa discussão permitiu apreender os debates e preocupações desenvolvidos no interior da tradição marxista que foram herdados pelo pós-marxismo, como a tentativa de combater o economicismo e afirmar a centralidade da política. O pós-marxismo também herda os dilemas políticos decorrentes da crise do marxismo e tenta repensar uma estratégia socialista na nova conjuntura do último quartel do século XX. Num segundo momento, abordamos as respostas à crise do marxismo que contribuíram para a constituição de um terreno pós-marxista e assinalamos como o grupo Socialismo ou Barbárie, a retomada do pensamento de Gramsci, as idéias de Derrida e a psicanálise exerceram forte influência sobre o enfoque de Laclau e Mouffe. Como desdobramento dessa análise, analisamos o desenvolvimento intelectual de Laclau e Mouffe e ressaltamos que há um contínuo diálogo crítico com a tradição marxista e um esforço no sentido de superar todo pressuposto essencialista inerente ao pensamento marxista. Por fim, investigamos de que maneira categorias oriundas do marxismo, como o materialismo, o antagonismo e a noção de hegemonia, como meio de repensar a estratégia socialista, são reelaboradas por Laclau e Mouffe, em que se definem como pós-marxistas. Nesta análise consideramos que, apesar dos autores tomarem tais categorias como ponto de partida, há uma ruptura com o pensamento de Marx na reformulação dessas categorias

Svenska värderingar har blivit en mycket välanvänd politisk term under de senaste åren, i allt från debatter och uttalanden i media till offentligt tryck. Jag vill med hjälp av Laclau och Mouffes diskursteori analysera hur begreppet svenska värderingar konstrueras i politisk debatt, hur detta påverkar subjekten och hur begreppets aktualitet kan förklaras. De texter jag analyserat är uttalanden från Stefan Löfven, Anna Kinberg Batra och Jimmie Åkesson. Resultatet visar att svenska värderingars aktualitet förklaras med bakgrund i flyktingkrisen, medias bevakning och diskursens påverkan på väljare. Alla partiledare ger uttryck för en övergripande dikotomidiskurs där det "svenska" ställs i motsats till det "icke-svenska". De subjektspositioner som konstrueras i det politiska talet, och tillskrivs de som ses som "icke-svenska", påverkar hur dessa människor förstår sig själv och hur de förstås av andra. I partiledarnas olika diskurser går det att utläsa både skillnader och likheter, vilket konstruerar svenska värderingar på delvis olika sätt. Det uppstår hegemoniska drag i bl.a. hur svenska värderingar konstrueras som under hot, vilket jag tillskriver kulturdiskursens övertag i den diskursiva kampen. Svenska värderingar uttrycks som ett komplext begrepp som artikuleras på flertalet olika sätt.

In recent years, there has been an increasing focus in Sweden on the library as a “public room” - a public space open to all. In light of this, the aim of this thesis were to explore existing discourses in the Swedish library-field surrounding users who use the libraries primarily in this capacity, i.e. users who use the libraries public open spaces without necessarily accessing in the library's other functions. The following research questions was formulated: How are users of the libraries public room categorised? What notions of the users are expressed in these categorizations? What discourses can be linked to these notions? How do the discourses relate to each other? To answer the research questions sixty-seven articles in three publications aimed at library professionals (Biblioteksbladet, Bibliotek i samhället and Framsidan) were analyzed. Using Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory and Hedemark and Hedman's (2002) four-step analytical model for discourse analysis, four discourses were identified: (1) educational, (2) democratic, (3) norm-critical, (4) market economy. The discourses, except the market-economy discourse, outlined democratic aims for the user's stay in the public room. The educational discourse aimed at fostering the user's ability to reason and function in society, the democratic discourse aimed at empowering the user while the norm-critical discourse aimed at enhance the user's ability to improve societal equality. The thesis concludes that there might exist disparities between how the library-field and the user attributes meaning to the concept “public room” and that further research is needed to define the concept.

Denna diskursanalytiska studie undersöker hur begreppet flykting konstrueras i svensk nyhetspress under tidsperioden 1995–2016. Studien utgår ifrån Laclau och Mouffes diskursteori. Den diskursteoretiska metodansatsen har för oss varit en självklar tillgång i vår process för att finna element, moment i de diskurser där flyktingen konstrueras. I denna studie har 996 rubriker från tidningarna Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Göteborgs-Posten samt Svenska Dagbladet använts vilka lett oss fram till tio övergripande diskurser, flyktingen som anonym, flyktingen som person, flyktingen som passivt offer, flyktingen som aktör, flyktingen som temporär, flyktingen som permanent, flyktingen som kriminell, flyktingen som hot, flyktingen som legitim och flyktingen som ett politiskt verktyg. Vi har visat hur flyktingen i de allra flesta artikulationer konstrueras som en homogen och abstrakt grupp, där flyktingen dessutom oftast är ett passivt offer. Som ett komplement till den diskursteoretiska ansatsen har även statistik gällande diskursernas frekvens förts vilken gett en förståelse för diskursernas utveckling. Ur detta kan ses att konstruktionerna av flyktingen ligger stabila men att det mediala intresset varierar beroende på andra samhälleliga händelser.

The rapid rise of alternative organisations such as social enterprises is largely due to the promotional activities of intermediary organisations. So far, little is known about the affective nature of such activities. The present article thus investigates how intermediary organisations make social entrepreneurship palatable for a broader audience by establishing it as an object of desire. Drawing on affect-oriented extensions of Laclau and Mouffe's poststructuralist theory, hegemonisation is suggested as a way of understanding how social entrepreneurship is articulated through a complementary process of signification and affective investment. Specifically, by examining Austrian intermediaries, we show how social entrepreneurship is endowed with a sense of affective thrust that is based on three interlocking dynamics: the articulation of fantasies such as 'inclusive exclusiveness', 'large-scale social change' and 'pragmatic solutions'; the repression of anxiety-provoking and contentious issues (constitutive quiescences); as well as the use of conceptually vague, floating signifiers (moments of indeterminacy). Demonstrating that the hegemonisation of social entrepreneurship involves articulating certain issues whilst, at the same time, omitting others, or rendering them elusive, the article invites a counter-hegemonic critique of social entrepreneurship, and, on a more general level, of alternative forms of organising, that embraces affect as a driving force of change, while simultaneously affirming the impossibility of harmony and wholeness.

In everyday life, imposing your will on your neighbour is likely to turn out counterproductive for your mutual relationship in the long term. Yet, the EU’s Enlargement-policy is commonly perceived as embedded with a spirit of policy imposition. While this is commonly perceived as a by-product of the EU’s power vis-à-vis pre-accession countries, few scholars have studied the implications of such imposition in its pre-accession contexts. This thesis aims to study such implications by drawing on Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theoretical approach (1985). It therefore asks, how can we identify spaces in which counterhegemonic discourses emerge? In answering this, it applies a multi-method case study of Kosovo’s pre-accession context and conceives of Enlargement as a hegemonic discourse. It argues that counterhegemonic spaces can be identified by studying the undecidability of Enlargement’s discursive structure. It finds that Kosovans are subject to a plethora of hegemonic narratives, which simultaneously possess the potential for counterhegemonic disarticulations. From this perspective, events such as the general election in 2019 in Kosovo can be understood as a counterhegemonic moment. In developing its discourse theoretical approach, it contributes to poststructuralist IR and European Integration Studies by developing our understandings of the interplay between hegemonic and counterhegemonic discourses.

This study takes a close look at the making of the Spanish left-wing populist party Podemos, paying special attention to the populist project devised by its original group of founders to capitalize on the political opportunities created by the 2008 economic crisis and the Indignados movement of 2011. Part I examines how Podemos’ founders used digital technology to connect with followers and exchange support and influence with them. It shows that online platforms constitute a precious tool in the hands of populist leaders who seek to mobilize plebiscitarian support for their authority and goals while creating a semblance of democratic participation. Part II delves deep into the biographical histories of the main founders of Podemos to investigate the beliefs and desires guiding their populist project. Based on a combination of qualitative research methods, including archival research, expert interviews, participant observation, and textual analysis, this study challenges the common notion that the founders of Podemos subscribe to the populist “ideology.” Instead, it demonstrates that they used populism strategically in order to take advantage of what Podemos’ leader Pablo Iglesias called a “Leninist moment” – an exceptional situation in which the seizure of power (through electoral means) becomes possible for a Communist party. It also shows that Ernesto Laclau’s theory of populism exerted a strong influence on some party founders. This was particularly the case for Íñigo Errejón, the main proponent of populism in Podemos, who used Laclau’s theory as a guide to thought and action and turned his book On Populist Reason into the first “sacred text” of the populist tradition.