In order to obtain a manifold view to the identity politics in the ECOC initiative, the research data consist of diverse materials produced at the EU and local levels.
The EU policy documents used in the study represent different EU policy levels. The focus of the policy documents in the data is in the ECOC initiative including the decisions on the initiative, instructions for the candidate cities, reports of the selection panels, and official ex post evaluation reports. The upper level policy documents include e.g., the Treaty of Lisbon and the European Agenda for Culture in a Globalizing World. The web site of the European Commission and its texts on the ECOC initiative and EU cultural policy has been included in the data.
The planning and promotional material at the local level comprises application books, programs and preliminary program plans, plans of various regeneration projects, promotional leaflets and brochures, and the official web pages of the selected ECOCs. Both the texts and images in the material have been included in the analysis.
Observation in the ECOCs during the field research periods broadened the data with first-hand experiences of the contents of the ECOC events, their arrangements, and promotion e.g., in local advertisements and opening speeches. In addition, the diverse regeneration, reparation, restoration, and construction projects and their impacts on urban space and people’s everyday life were observed. Information obtained through informal discussions with local people, cultural operators, artists, performers, scholars, volunteers, and workers at the management offices of the ECOCs have been used in the study.
The observation occurred as a byproduct while conducting research in the case cities and was therefore not systematic or structured. The observation was documented by photographing the transformation of the public spaces, the regeneration and construction projects, and the cultural participation and behavior of the ECOC event audiences. The discussions with diverse people were documented by taking notes.
The social media discussions and Internet sites of local activists criticizing the ECOC designation and program of Turku2011 form a more focused part of the data. This data includes texts in several discussion forums, posts to the comment forums of local newspapers, blog posts, Facebook pages, and videos. In the data collection, the online sites were observed virtually during the ECOC year.
The questionnaire data on the audience reception of the ECOC events was gathered in the case cities during the field research. The questionnaire study focused on the respondents’ notions on the representations of area-based (local, regional, national, and European) cultural identities in the ECOC events. The data comprises altogether 1425 responses (200 from Pécs, 293 from Tallinn, 400 from Turku, and 532 online responses to a preliminary survey from Pécs). The
45 data collection for the questionnaire study took place in Pécs in April, May, and October 2010, in Tallinn in May 2011, and in Turku in August 2011. The questionnaire data was collected in 23 events in Pécs, 17 in Tallinn, and 21 in Turku. The selected events differed greatly in their size (mass events, small-scale events), location (indoors, public space, city center, suburbs), organization (free of charge, at a charge), target audience (age, gender, ethnic, and language groups) and genre. Some of the selected events were festivals or series of events including various types of performances. The aim of the event selection was to include an extensive range of events, which would represent the variety of the whole ECOC program in the case cities. The program of Turku included altogether 155, Tallinn 251, and Pécs 324 projects. However, the total number of separate events in the cities was much higher since many of them covered various types of smaller events and performances. From three to thirty responses were collected from each event, depending on the size of the event. In addition, responses were collected online in Pécs from the end of February till the end of May 2010. The implementation of the questionnaire study is discussed in more detail in the article ‘Discourses of Europeanness in the reception of the European Capital of Culture events: The case of Pécs 2010’.
The respondents were asked whether they considered that the area-based identities were or should be represented in the ECOC events and in case they did, how were they or how should they be represented. The design of the questionnaire was based on the diverse and multifaceted meanings of the key area-based identity concepts. The concepts were not explained or defined in the questions: the respondents were instructed to concretize and describe the concepts in responses to open questions according to their own understanding.
However, the context of the study (i.e. the focus on cultural events) directed the respondents to perceive the concepts as cultural identities (and not e.g., in the sense of citizenship or civic status). The questions were based on an assumption that identities can be in some way represented by cultural phenomena, cultural interaction, and cultural communication. At the same time this assumption forms the fundamental basis for the whole ECOC initiative: the initiative has aimed to foster and bring to the fore local, regional, and European cultures and identities through the cultural offerings in the ECOCs. A more detailed qualitative analysis of the responses from each case city and a statistical comparison between the results from the three cities have been presented in separate articles (see Lähdesmäki 2011; 2013b; 2013c; 2014b; forthcoming a).
Section 3.2 summarizes the main results of the questionnaire study from the three case cities, emphasizing particularly the notions on European identity. The more detailed investigation of the questionnaire data is not included in this dissertation.
Similar data collection process regarding the planning and promotional material, questionnaires, and observations was conducted in all case cities. In general, different data types bring to the fore different aspects of identity politics
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within the ECOC initiative. The data covers various scalarly levels, social and societal layers, and roles and agencies within the initiative thereby giving a comprehensive image of the included identity projects. In addition, the multifaceted data enables the use of various methods in the analysis.
In the study, the data has been analyzed with qualitative and quantitative methods. Mixed methods enable a holistic understanding of the topic.
Combining both qualitative and quantitative methods in the analysis of the data fits the multi- and interdisciplinary points of departure of the research. In the study, the quantitative methods are used to analyze the questionnaire data.
The data in the articles selected for this dissertation is analyzed with qualitative methods. The chosen methods emphasize the role and significance of language and other symbolic orders as a means and a place where the cultural, social, and political meanings are produced and mediated. The theoretical basis of the used methods is in social constructionism, which emphasizes reality as a construction produced in language, interaction, and social practices. The fundamental point of departure in social constructionism is the idea of non-reflectivity: language and its use are not assumed to reflect external reality, but are instead perceived as inseparably intertwined (Gergen 1985; Potter &
Wetherell 1989). The point of view founded on the idea of the intertwined nature of reality and language has been applied in the frame of social constructionism with a variety of different emphases. These emphases range between two poles: according to some views there are non-discursive worlds outside the sphere of language, while other views stress that the world can only be perceived as structured and sensible through language. The former view has been called as weak, contextual, or ontological constructionism and the latter view as tight or epistemic constructionism (Sarbin & Kitsuse 1994; see also Lähdesmäki 2007, 53). According to the weak view, the material world exists regardless of symbolic orders, such as representations and language, even though the symbolic orders make sense and give meanings to the world. From the perspective of the strong view, it is impossible to access and be in a ‘direct’
connection with the world, because the relationship is always mediated by symbolic structures of meaning, such as language – or there is an ‘epistemic distance’ between us and the world, as Charles W. Tolman (1994, 19) describes the relation. In the strong view, the focus of the investigations is on the social constructions as such, and the discussions on the ‘reality’ of these constructions are not considered relevant (e.g., Potter 1996). The point of departure for this study relies on the strong understanding of social constructionism: symbolic orders and linguistic meaning making processes in particular are perceived as fundamental in the production, manifestation, and interpretation of identities and identity politics.
In this study, the previously defined concepts are used as instruments of discussing and making sense of the identity projects, identity politics, and the complex and constructed nature of identities in general. The concepts function
47 as bridges between the theories which frame the focus of the study and methods which are used in the analysis of the empirical data. Through the concepts the chosen theoretical points of view have been merged with the points of departure and the implementation of the analysis – and after the analysis, the concepts are used in order to draw broader conclusions of its results.
The main qualitative method used in the study is discourse analysis. Because discourse analysis includes several fundamental premises, scholars have described the method both as a methodological and theoretical frame of reference (Potter & Wetherell 1989, 175; Philips & Hardy 2002). Besides social constructionism, these premises comprise suppositions on contextuality (discourses are socio-cultural, situational, and historical), functionality of language (the language use is an act and produces action and consequences), and coexistence of different discourses (discourses form hierarchical structures in relation to each other) (see e.g., Potter & Wetherell 1989; Parker 1999).
The concept of discourse can be defined in different ways. On one hand, scholars have used it to refer to the restricted ways of producing meanings in and through a certain kind of language use and social practices. On the other hand, the concept has been applied to explain larger societal structures that have an impact on various domains in societies and are manifested as similar kinds of strivings, values, ways of thinking, and actions (van Dijk 1997). Sometimes the broader understanding of the discourse has been referred to with the concept of discourse order (van Dijk 1997, 1–4). In addition, in this broader sense, the concept of discourse is close to the sociological use of the concept of ideology (Hall 1992; Pennycook 1994) or the idea of an episteme, as discussed by Foucault (1970). For Foucault, certain kinds of configurations of knowledge and underlying assumptions regarding what is ‘true’, ‘good’, and ‘proper’ produce a kind of an ‘epistemological unconscious’ of an era that encompasses a wider range of discourses in culture, education, science, politics, law, moral, etc.
(Foucault 1980, 194–198).
In this study the concept of discourse is used in both the specific and the broad societal meanings. The closer context of the analysis indicates the terms of reference in which the concept is used. In the analysis of the data, the concept refers to the data-specific and restricted meaning of the discourse, while in the discussion on the ideological, political, and societal connections of the results, the concept is used in a broader sense.
Norman Fairclough has pointed out that the concept of discourse is often narrowly understood as referring only to a linguistic or textual phenomenon, even though the concept comprises all symbolic meaning-making processes – including e.g., visual and performative processes. Therefore, he has used, in some of his studies, the concept of semiosis instead of discourse in order to emphasize the multimodality of symbolic orders and ‘languages’ (Fairclough, Jessop & Sayer 2002; Fairclough 2004a; Fairclough 2004b). In addition to spoken and written languages, discourses may appear as ‘ways of being in the world’
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and materialize as objects (Fairclough 2004a). In this study, discourses are analyzed as a part of the data which comprises textual, visual, spatial, material, and performative ‘languages’. Thus, the outlined discourses in the study are not only textual phenomena, but also e.g., spatial, sensorial, behavioral, and performative, as the article ‘Discourses of Europeanness in the Reception of the European Capital of Culture Events: The Case of Pécs 2010’ indicates.
Critical emphasis in the discourse analysis stresses linguistic choices as a use of power (Foucault 1972; Fairclough 1992b, 8–9; 2001a, 36–63). The main focus of critical discourse analysis is on power hierarchies, modes of dominance and oppression, and ideologies that are used to justify the use of power. In the frame of critical discourse analysis, ideology can be understood as a combination of constructions, representations, and claims about reality that are inherent in the discourses and participate in the production, establishment, and maintaining of power relations. At their strongest, ideologies are perceived as taken-for-granted and naturalized as ‘common sense’. (Fairclough 1992b, 87; 1995a, 36; 1995b, 63–
64; 2004a.) Ideologies are attached to language, semantics, linguistic utterances, and the structures of discourses and social practices in manifold ways. Thus the contests of competing discourses often include ideological battles (Fairclough 1992b, 85–86). A core motive and aim of critical discourse analysis is to make transparent the existence of ideologies, the naturalization of certain discourses, the emergence of taken-for-granted meanings, and the power mechanism intertwined with the discourses (Fairclough 1995a, 132–133). These aims also determine the study at hand.
In practice, the discourse analysis is an attempt to perceive and explain the connections between micro-level symbolic expressions and macro-level socio-cultural structures in order to understand their mutual interaction and interdependence. The meanings of linguistic utterances, representations, or social action are not perceived in the analysis only as ’local’ or situational: each micro-level expression participates in the production and reproduction of the macro-level social-cultural structures and practices. Similarly the macro-level forms the frames in which the micro-level expressions are possible to take place.
(Fairclough 1995a, 35.) In this study discourse analysis is used as the main method in the following articles: ‘Rhetoric of Unity and Cultural Diversity in the Making of European Cultural Identity’, ‘European Capitals of Culture as Cultural Meeting Places – Strategies of Representing Cultural Diversity‘, ‘Discourses of Europeanness in the Reception of the European Capital of Culture Events: The Case of Pécs 2010’, and ‘Cultural Activism as a Counter-Discourse to the European Capital of Culture Program: The Case of Turku2011’. In these articles the analysis of the data has followed Fairclough´s (1995) model of discourse analysis that consists of three intertwined layers: the text (understood in a broad Barthesian sense), the discourse practice (comprising diverse practices of producing and receiving the texts), and the socio-cultural practice (which in the contexts of the articles cover e.g., the EU policy and politics and cultural, social, and political characteristics at
49 the local, regional, and/or national levels). The articles aim to bring to the fore the interaction and interdependence of these layers in the data. The outlining of the discourses in the articles is based on the analysis of the empirical data, except in the article ‘Discourses of Europeanness in the Reception of the European Capital of Culture Events: The Case of Pécs 2010’ in which the discourses are theory-based.
Besides discourse analysis, the study utilizes a more general and broader qualitative approach to the data. This approach is defined in the study as ‘close reading’. Close reading is a broad category of interpretative explorations, which enable a researcher to carry out a detailed analysis of phenomena on semantic, structural, and cultural levels. It is associated with the critical history produced by the New Criticism in literary studies (DuBois 2003, 2), aiming at “mindful, disciplined reading of an object with a view to deeper understanding of its meanings” (Brummett 2010, 3). Conceptually, close reading refers to the analysis of words and the interpretation of texts. However, researchers have applied close reading to various other phenomena, such as media texts, images, films, games, and environments (see e.g. Grant, Sloniowski & Nichols 1998; Bizzocchi
& Tanenbaum 2011; Stables 2006). The aim of close reading is to highlight meanings, their structures, and the contexts in which they are produced as they can be found in the data. Close reading thus shares similar goals and motives with discourse analysis. In this study, close reading is used as the main method in the article ‘European Capital of Culture Designation as an Initiator of Urban Transformation in the Post-Socialist Countries’. In the article, the planning and promotional material from several recent and forthcoming eastern European ECOCs is analyzed by using close reading as an instrument of the critical hermeneutic interpretation of meanings given to the transformation of urban space.
The questionnaire data has been analyzed with quantitative and qualitative methods. In section 3.2, the open responses on Europeanness in the questionnaire data are investigated through qualitative thematic analysis (see e.g., Taylor & Bogdan 1984; Boyatzis 1998; Seidman 1998; Patton 2002). In the thematic analysis, distinct themes are defined as units derived from patterns such as “conversation topics, vocabulary, recurring activities, meanings, feelings, or folk sayings and proverbs” (Taylor & Bogdan 1984, 131). A theme might be expressed in “a single word, a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph or an entire document” (Zhang & Wildemuth 2009, 310). In thematic analysis, the focus of the study is on an expression of certain meaningful ideas (Minichiello et al. 1990) recognized from the data through the researcher’s careful examination and constant comparison between linguistic patterns. (For a more detailed application of the method see Lähdesmäki 2011; 2013b; forthcoming a.) The aim of the thematic analysis in the research at hand was to structure the ‘polyphonic’
nature of the responses in order to understand how the representations of Europeanness were interpreted in the ECOC events. As a result of the analysis,
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common themes and recurrent response types were identified: in the responses certain ways to interpret the representations of Europeanness were more common than others. In the analysis, similar kinds of responses were arranged under a unifying theme. After the qualitative thematic analysis the identified themes were quantified in order to get an idea of their frequency. In the quantification, each identified theme was given a code number and the responses to the open questions were coded according to these numbers.
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3 The European Capital of Culture Initiative at the Local Level
3.1 CONTRADICTIONS BETWEEN AIMS AND