Shrinking Citizenship: Discursive Practices That Limit Democratic Participation in Latvian Politics

Description

The book, based on research results from a three-year study of parliamentary and media debates in Latvia, analyses the discourses of Latvian politicians and the media about nation, citizenship, cultural diversity, history and the nation-state. This is the first large-scale study of political debates in a Baltic State from the perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Separate chapters, by researchers from Canada, Latvia, Lithuania and the UK, analyse the intersections between national identity construction, national mythmaking, concepts of citizenship, journalistic action, press ownership and questions of control of political and media discourses. All of these have impact on the fundamental questions of the relationship between individuals and the state. The authors conclude that even after the accession to the European Union in 2004, political pressures in Latvia, as also frequently on the political Right in other EU countries, promote ethnic membership as the guiding factor of state-building. Shrinking Citizenship: Discursive Practices that Limit Democratic Participationin Latvian Politics Table of Contents Note on political party names in English and Latvian Foreword Some Recent Discourses of Exclusion in the EU Part I The Media, the Parties and the Negotiation of Political Power in a Baltic Landscape Baltic Media Structures and the Influence of Media Latvian Print Media as Opinion Leaders Latvian Political Party System and the Discourse on Political Parties Part II From Rhetoric to Political Agenda: the Construction of Ethnic Political Identity in the Latvian Media The Construction of Ethnic Political Identity and the Mechanisms of Exclusion in the Latvian-language Media The Discursive Construction of “Russian-speakers”: The Russian-language Media and Demarcated Political Identities in Latvia Part III Historical Notions and Strategies of Exclusion in Latvian Politics Multiculturalism as Imperialism: Condemnation of Social Diversity within a Discourse of Threat and Blame Moral Superiority and the Soviet Stigma: Parliamentary Speech and Attribution of Blame in Political Discourses Moral Superiority and the Soviet Stigma: Parliamentary Speech and Attribution of Blame in Political Discourses Afterword