Competing discourses of the rural Norway
By
Jørn Cruickshank (jorn.cruickshank@agderforskning.no)
Hans Kjetil Lysgård (hans.k.lysgaard@agderforskning.no)
May-Linda Magnussen (may-linda.magnussen@agderforskning.no)
Trond S. Mydland (trond.s.mydland@agderforskning.no)
Agder Research
Servicebox 415
4604 Kristiansand
Norway
Phone +47 48 01 05 20
Fax +47 38 14 22 01
Introduction
This paper reports from an on-going research project, where we are presently working on the
methodological design for the further work.
In the modern western world the creation of lifestyle and identity is, more than earlier, a
product of individual choice, and the place we choose to live is often part of the process of
creating identity. Based on this understanding, we believe that knowledge on ideas about ‘the
rural’ and ‘the urban’ play a principal role in understanding rural-urban migration and the
choices people make about where to live. Knowledge on the social construction of ideas about
places, and the social consequences of these ideas, will provide valuable inputs to future
regional and rural policy.
When we act and talk, we produce and reproduce a certain way of understanding the world. In
a discourse analytical approach the researcher assumes that groups of people share and further
develop an idea about the world and what it is all about. People who take the same facts and
values for granted, and who participate in reproducing these ideas, are all part of a discourse.
The discourse, in other words, produces ‘truths’ about the world. Sometimes a discourse gains
so much ground that the truths within the discourse also become truths underlying
government policy: The discourse gains hegemony over competing discourses (Adger et.al.
2001). We will look for both hegemonic and competing discourses about rurality in Norway,
on several arenas and at different points in time. This process will unveil the distribution of
power between arenas in defining problems and solutions concerning rural areas. The focus
on the relationship between certain ‘truths’ and actual political measures will also remind us
that new action can be taken in rural policy.
Our paper focuses on how a methodological design for such a discourse analysis can be
developed. Post-structuralism and a discourse analytical approach is now widely recognised
in the social sciences, but there is a challenge in linking the epistemology to a practical,
methodological level. Our intention is to show how this link can be established in the concrete
case of ‘rurality’ discourses in Norwegian rural policy and public debate. Discourse theory is
not a much-used approach in studies on rural issues in Norway. We will argue for the
advantages of taking such an approach in the study of how images of ‘the rural’ and rural
‘problems’ have influenced rural policy in Norway.
The paper starts with a short introduction to the historical context of rural policy in Norway.
We then argue for the relevance of a discourse analytical approach on this issue, based on
both changes in politics and in research. After that, we discuss underlying epistemological
assumptions in discourse analysis, to show their relevance for our study. The main aim of the
paper – finding a solution to the problem of linking the epistemological level and research
methods in a specific methodological design - is then in focus. We demonstrate how we
construct our design based on an understanding of which arenas are principal in producing the
discourses (where to find the producers of the discursive material) and what the nature of the
‘object’ of study is (what the empirical substance is and how to analyse it).
1
Norwegian regional and rural policy and migration patterns 19602000
Norway and the other Nordic countries, except Denmark, have vast areas with very low
population density. These areas have been the focus of Nordic regional policy in most of the
post-war period and until relatively recently. Some researchers have described Nordic
regional policy in the post-war period as 'periphery policy’, which has no clear English
translation (Mønnesland 1997). It is often more relevant to talk about ‘rural policy’ than
‘regional policy’, because of the dominant rural focus. Also on the academic arena, at least in
Norway, the research field ‘regional development’ is regarded almost as synonymous with
research on ‘rural development’. Regional political discourses likewise have a rural profile,
and have almost the entire post-war period been focused on rural problems (Berg and Lysgård
2001).
The production of the hegemonic discourse on rural policies, with the idea of stabilising and
maintaining the established settlement pattern in the forefront, can be traced back to the early
1950s. After the Second World War Norway was faced with the task of rebuilding the
country. It was almost undisputed that the building of welfare state services and the
tremendous economic growth should include rural areas, and that a regional policy was
needed for this purpose (Teigen 1999).
In the 60s, a nation-wide bureaucracy to administer the regional policy was established.
Rationalisation processes in agriculture caused unemployment in most rural areas, which in
turned caused migration to urban areas and contributed to urban growth. In the early 70s, yet
another conception was tied up to the idea of even economic growth in all parts of the
country: the idea of stabilising the settlement pattern. This idea has permeated Norwegian
regional policy ever since. The political aim in the 70s was to avoid depopulation in any
municipality, and local settlement was regarded as having intrinsic value. The period also
experienced a decrease in net out-migration from peripheral regions and a decrease in inmigration to central regions.
In the beginning of the 80s, migration towards central areas increased, and especially
migration towards the greater cities. The late 80s experienced a slow down in migration
towards central areas. From the beginning of the 90s, however, and until today, there has
been a dramatic increase in migration from peripheral areas. Also larger centres in the more
remote regions, centres that formerly balanced out the total population figure of the region,
were increasingly faced with migration loss (Hanell 1998). Towards the end of the 90s, there
was a shift in the focus of regional policy, described by the Minister of regional development
and local government as “a shift from a policy directed towards all regions towards a policy
with a stronger focus on the weakest parts of the country” (Aalbu 1998:9) In the Review to
Parliamenti in 2001 (St.meld. 34), this policy is continued, but now alongside the idea of the
so-called ‘robust’ regions.
This means that the discourse produced through fifty years of political history is challenged.
The official rural policy part of the regional policy is referred to by the slogan ‘small
communities’ (‘småsamfunn’), along with the slogan ‘robust regions’ (‘robuste regioner’). In
order to supplement the regional policy with a more urban perspective, a new Review to
Parliament, focusing on urban policy, came in 2003. On the practical level, the rural policy
explicitly aiming at rural areas has been halved during the 1990s, the rural part of sectored
policies has decreased (NOU 2004:2) and the aim for the settlement pattern is lifted from the
municipal to the regional level.
2
Regional and rural research
Regional politics and research in Norway has been, and still is, intertwined. The government
is a large consumer of research results and also use researchers as advisors and members in
committees and commissions. Some times research is initiated in politicians’ ideas about
rurality, and can be seen as reproducing these ideas instead of challenging them, while other
times the researchers provide knowledge that moves the political discourse in new directions.
A lot of regional research conducted in Norway has studied people’s reasons for choosing
place to live. Often, this kind of research ends in a description of public and private services
available in remote areas and which measures have to be taken to satisfy the present and
potential inhabitants and the need for industrial development. This research has traditionally
taken its point of departure in quantifiable socio-economic variables, such as educational level
and labour market, and has regarded these variables as the explanation for migration from the
rural countryside into towns and cities (Teigen 1984, Hansen 1996, Selstad 1979, Orderud
1998, Foss 1988).
Some European research claim that rurality can be understood as a social construction that
appear as an idea about what is urban and what belongs to the rural (Cloke et al. 1997,
Halfacree 1993 1995, Ilbery et al. 1998, Jones 1995, Mormont 1990, Murdoch & Pratt 1993,
Pratt 1996, Valentine 1997). This kind of studies, where the ambition is to understand how we
come to perceive ‘the rural’ in a certain way, is almost missing in Norway. There is little
doubt that the ideas about problems and solutions in rural policies diverge between different
actors in different positions. An understanding of why and how these ideas are produced and
reproduced and what this means in terms of formation and implementation of policy, is
important.
We will claim that the two mentioned research traditions exist alongside each other today, but
that the first functionalist approach still has some degree of hegemony in the knowledge
production. The social constructivist approach is more limited, although growing. Analysed
within the frames of a discursive approach, we can place the regional and rural research on a
continuum from studying discourse as constituting for society at the one end, towards the
study of already constituted discourses at the other end.
Discourse
constitutes
Dialectic relation
Laclau and
Mouffe
Discourse is
constituted
Historic
materialism
Source: (Jørgensen og Phillips 2000 p.29)
At the right end of the continuum, studies of rural societies are conducted without questioning
our conceptualisation of it. It is then based on a common and underlying understanding about
how rural society and processes are put together, and the focus is on how and why things are
functioning and connected within this frame of understanding. At the other end of this
continuum we are questioning the whole system of beliefs about the rural. The interest is not
pointed at substance, but on the representation of the substance.
3
Relevance
A central underlying condition in discourse analysis is the assumption that ideas and
imaginations have social consequences. We assume that discourses on rurality influence
regional policies. We also assume that discourses of rurality influence the popular
understanding of life in the city and on the countryside, and thereby migration patterns. The
assumption that conceptions have social consequences implies that power and influence is not
only situated in formal decision-making, but in creation and recreation of imaginations and in
construction of discourses. Due to the supposition that this variant of power works more
subtly than various forms of formal power, and therefore can be more difficult to identify,
some consider this the principal source of power. To identify the construction and
reconstruction of discourses on rurality on different arenas and among different actors in
Norway will contribute towards a better understanding of the distribution of power among
these producers.
Since our impression is that most of Norwegian regional research can be placed in the right
end of the continuum shown above, a discourse analytical approach can provide new
knowledge to this research field. It is of great importance to reveal that ideas about rurality are
just that and not objective truths. This critical perspective is implicit in discourse analysis, and
opens up the possibility of doing things differently.
In addition to the academic relevance, the political timing for a study of the discourses of
rurality is good, since this issue presently is an explicit topic in Norway. In order to evaluate
both the geographical organisation of the regional and rural policy and the objectives,
initiatives and impacts, two commissions were appointed in 2002/2003. One was to
investigate the impact of the specific initiatives used in regional and rural policy. The
committee presented their report spring 2004 (NOU 2004:2). The other commission has a
broader mandate aiming at evaluating the regional and rural policy as such, and will present
their report September 2004. This commission questions the objectives, the value foundation
and the understanding of ‘problems’ that the regional and rural policies has been based on,
and will suggest changes in present and future policy.
Epistemology
We choose a discourse analytical approach to regional research because we are certain that
this perspective will procure new and important knowledge. Attention to the fact that ‘the
rural’ and ‘the urban’ are social constructions with specific social consequences increases the
chances of thinking and doing differently. Here we want to elaborate some on the
epistemological foundations of the methodological design we present in this paper. We will
very briefly give a definition of the perspective and show how central points in its
epistemological and theoretical base influence our study.
A discourse can be defined as a more or less defined field of knowledge containing facts,
conceptions and myths about how the world functions. Discourse is “all forms of spoken
interaction, formal and informal, and written texts of all kinds” (Potter and Wetherell 1987:
7). But it “is not just another word for conversation…it refers to all the ways in which we
communicate with one another, so that vast network of signs, symbols, and practices through
which we make our world(s) meaningful to ourselves and others” (Gregory 1987:11). For us,
discourses reveal themselves as structures in what different actors say about ‘the urban’ and
‘the rural’: We identify discourses as patterns in argumentation. Opinions directed towards
one specific subject can often be linked to opinions towards a number of other related subjects
4
– there is an intrinsic logic between different opinions and meaning connected to them.
Discourse is therefore not fragmented meanings, but intricate systems or patterns of meaning.
These meaning systems are the objects of our study.
Inside the discourses, ‘truths’ about the world are constructed and reconstructed. These
conceptions influence what we view as different alternatives of action, whether we are
politicians working with rural policies or individuals considering where to live: This is how
discourses have social consequences. Our intention for the methodological design is to
develop an approach for exploring imaginations of ‘rurality’ in Norwegian rural policy and
public debate, linked to discourse theory on an epistemological and ontological level. To
investigate these constructions of ‘rurality’, we draw on various methods developed in
discourse analytical traditions.
Discourse analysis is, simply put, analysis of processes in which people create meaning. It is
not a homogenous perspective, and there are several discourse analytical traditions1. They all
share an epistemological and theoretical base drawing on social constructivism and poststructuralism, and they also share central methodological thoughts. Jørgensen and Phillips
(1999) argue that one should pick and choose from the various traditions to fit the problem
statement of the specific research. We will elaborate further on the specific choices we have
made in the section on methodology.
The social constructivist tradition considers human notions as constituted by acts of human
practices in society. ‘Rurality’ is for our purpose not something given, but a social
construction: Its existence and the meaning that is put into it is dependent on its producers.
Burr (1995) claims that approaches within a social constructivist framework have in common
a critical awareness towards obvious knowledge and a perspective on knowledge production
as situated in specific historical and cultural settings. Further, knowledge is always considered
linked to social processes and to social action: What members of a society say and do depends
on knowledge of what is true in any given society.
In our search for contents in the conception ‘rurality’, we are not trying to “grasp one whole”.
We are looking for understandings that (are so obvious that) they are taken for granted. We
explore these understandings in relation to the settings they are expressed in, and seek to
identify traces of the same uses of ‘rurality’ in different settings. Further we describe and
analyse the social processes we find central in the formation and maintenance of ‘rurality’ in
each setting. Essential here is to explore what members of the settings say and write about,
and in relation to, ‘rurality’ as concept.
Michel Foucault is central in the discourse theoretical tradition. His works show an
understanding of knowledge as a strategic and political field. Foucault argues that knowledge
is social constructed categories, and he explores how some statements achieves acceptance as
meaningful and true in particular historical eras. According to Foucault, truth forms trough
discursive process. According to Foucault (1982 1994 1995) a discourse is a strategic or
political fields of knowledge, and his projects are to a large degree about how power or power
strategies are strongly related to the formation of specific fields of knowledge. What should
be studied is not power per se, but how ideas are constituted in the tension between powerrelations and fields of knowledge in a time-space specific historical process. Power relations
are therefore relevant when we analyse whom, how and through which actions ideas about
1
Jørgensen and Phillips (1999) identify three traditions: Discourse theory, critical discourse analysis and
discourse psychology.
5
‘the rural’ is constructed, and how discourses gain hegemony among researchers, politicians,
media and laypersons.
Teun Van Dijk’s work has made the important transition from text analysis to discourse
analysis. Van Dijk’s analysis has a social-psychological emphasis on processes of social
cognition – on how cognitive ‘models’ and ‘schemata’ shape production and comprehension
of discourses. Van Dijks main motivation for linking texts to context is to show in detail how
social relations and processes are accomplished at a micro-level through routine practices.
We will now go on to show how these ontological and epistemological choices have lead to
some practical problems, and suggest solutions in our search for how ideas about rurality is
constructed through the struggle between competing discourses.
Methodology and method
We will mainly approach discourse from a post-structural approach. As a branch within social
constructivism, the approach does not expect to find something behind the discourse; the
discourse is the area of study. There is no truth behind the discourse, for the discourse
constructs the truth. Our methodological framework will consist of four main building blocks,
where the order and weight on each activity will be decided as our study moves along. Firstly,
we will utilise Jones’ description of four arenas that are central for the production of ideas
about rurality, as a departure point for identifying relevant texts. We will also lean on the
already acquired knowledge about migration patterns and rural policies that is produced by
Norwegian researchers through the last fifty years. This knowledge will further help to
structure our discourse-analytical study. Thirdly, we will search for patterns in a number of
texts, in order to identify the skeleton of different discourses on rurality. Finally we will use
Van Dijks social-cognitive model when we perform in-depth textual analysis on selected
texts, in an attempt to link texts analysis to our wider discourse analysis. We will elaborate on
the four elements of our analysis below. The main part of the paper will deal with the two
text-analytical approaches.
Four discourse-producing arenas
The framework of our discourse analysis is based on of Jones’ division of arenas for
discourse. Owain Jones (1995) presents in an article about how academic discourse doesn’t
fully grasp the spatial and conceptual complexity of lay discourses, at the same time a very
useful analytical framework for our study. Jones clarifies how we can identify lay, popular,
professional and academic discourses; which correspond to what we have chosen to term the
four arenas where discourses of rurality is especially evident. Jones (1995) operates with a
popular arena (i. e. newspapers and television), where information is created to address
people beyond personal networks. On the political arena individuals and political parties
engage in political struggles about the development of rural policies. On the academic arena
we find actors who are studying rurality and rural policies, whereas the lay arena involves all
intentional and incidental communication in our everyday lives (for an elaboration on the four
arenas and the selected texts, see Cruickshank 2003). Our assumption is that discourses are
produced and reproduced on the four arenas, as illustrated in this figure:
6
Academic
Political
Popular
Lay
Discourses on rurality
We believe that a discourse analytical method cannot be developed independent of the social
practice that the discursive practice is woven into. Like Fairclough, we acknowledge that
there is discursive practice, but also social practice that is not discursive. The discourses that
we are trying to reveal are influenced by and influence other social practices. These social
practices will be the starting point for the framing of the problem statement (Jørgensen and
Phillips 2000). Fairclough further assumes that there is not just one discourse (on rurality), but
an order of discourses (Fairclough in Jørgensen and Phillips 2000). Different discourses partly
cover the same terrain and compete about filling this with content.
According to Foucault (1972), a discourse can be seen as a network of statements based on
facilities, practices and institutions that are organised in a regular and systematic way,
determining (but does not set definite limits to) what belongs to and what falls outside. From
this definition it seems like the discourse itself defines what it is and where its limits are. This
constitutes a challenge in the study of discourses. We understand discourse more as an
analytical approach than something already existing in reality: It is a description that we lay
down on reality in order to create a framework for our study. So the discourses are not
completely delimited in reality, and reality does not decide how we come to define a
discourse, it is more the other way around. The aim of our study should decide where we
choose to put a limit between discourses, and we also have to justify that what we define as a
discourse is a reasonable demarcation. “The discourse analytical framework has to be built up
in an interactive process with reality, where one both knows and gives an account for, how
the framework forms the subject and the subject forms the framework” (Jørgensen and
Phillips 2000 s.155). With this acknowledgement we have chosen to start out with the
following two discourses that each has hegemony at different periods of time:
Red-green movement: In the 70s there was a hegemonic discourse that produced a wide range
of rural policy initiatives, and which may also have influenced the settlement pattern. We
witnessed a new and strong focus on environmental issues and issues of local mobilisation
and participation, with connections to the radical movements that we find all over the western
world in the aftermath of the student rebellions in 1968. The image of rural idyll that followed
from this movement probably influenced rural policy more than it actually caused migration
from urban to rural areas directly (like in Denmark, for instance (Svendsen 2004)). The
political aim in the 70s was to avoid depopulation in any municipality, and local settlement
was regarded as having a value in itself. The goal was well on the way of being reached
during the 70s, with a relative stabilisation of the pattern of settlement. But even if the spectre
of rural policy-programmes widened in the 1960 and -70s, the main reason why the settlement
7
pattern stabilised in the 70s was probably the development of public services to all parts of the
country (NOU 2004:2).
It is likely that when the Korvald-government, representing the winning No-movement
against the EU, placed the goal for a distributed settlement pattern ahead of any other goal in
1973 (Aasbrenn 1996: 51), they, consciously or not, made use of a number of existing ideas
and values, whereas other “truths” where changed or ignored in the production of this new
hegemonic discourse. What seems to have been reproduced was for instance the focus on
production, which at least can be traced back to the process of rebuilding the country that
started after WW2 (Arbo 2004: p.7, NOU 2004(2): p. 57). This provided fishermen and
farmers with an increased influence and legitimacy. What was also kept was the conviction
that the growth is to be initiated by an active state, in line with Keynes theories; a state that
intervenes directly in the market by providing capital and establishing industrial companies. A
widely shared planning optimism was further combined with academic influence from
localisation theory, economic base theory and growth poles based on clusters of key
businesses (Amdam and Bukve 2004: p.112). The state at the same time was the obvious
distributor of welfare to underdeveloped regions and classes (ibid. p.12). What was
reproduced to a lesser degree was the habit of defining rural areas through their defective
performance compared to urban areas (Arbo 2004: p.8). The new story was rather that “small
is beautiful”, and problems in rural areas were caused by policies and exploitation from
outside rural areas (Brox 1966). A new hegemonic discourse on rurality was established.
The ‘truth’ about rural areas, and the way it was produced, can be traced in texts from the four
arenas at this period. This ‘truth’ was different than in Norway today.
Wave of right wing attitudes: The Keynesian problem of stagflation (both inflation and
stagnation in the economy) led to a shift in the role of the state from distribution to
development. Growth, from the mid-90s, was to be created on the basis of regional
mobilisation of resources and competence. Private businesses were no longer clients for the
state, but partners in regional networks who are supposed to allow for endogen growth. The
partnership model is partly inspired by development policy in the EU. What is interesting is
that the basic growth theories are the same as in the 70s, only now they are used as arguments
for initiatives towards the winners; “represented by the cities where the strong knowledgeinstitutions and the knowledge-based businesses can be found” (Arbo 2004: p.8). So
obviously the ideological climate must have changed. In the beginning of the 80s, the wave of
right-wing attitudes with an individual oriented liberalism, represented by Thatcher in Great
Britain and Reagan in the US, reached Norway. The yuppies were the first sign of a more
deeply rooted urbanism in Norway. Ideologically the wave of right-wing attitudes never
ceased (Eriksen, T.B. and Sørensen, Ø. 2003: 337) and the market economy is now as
hegemonic in Norway as social democracy and joint solutions were fifty years ago. The wave
has washed all political parties towards the right. We have witnessed a shift from government
to governance as planning paradigm. The hegemony of this quite different discourse of the
rural is unquestionable: The narrow rural policy explicitly aiming at rural areas has been
halved during the 1990s, the rural part of sectored policies has decreased (NOU 2004:2) and
the aim for the settlement pattern is lifted from the municipal to the regional level. In addition,
rural initiatives are no longer “hard”; meaning direct production oriented investments in
buildings and production equipment, but instead more and more indirect and business-neutral,
directed towards knowledge, innovation and entrepreneurs.
8
These two periods with different hegemonic discourses influence policies, but also social
practice in general (ideas about rural and urban life, motives for migration, actual
migration/lack of migration). The case study from the 70s is to be contrasted with the present
discourses on rurality, where we also have a hegemonic discourse that combines discourses in
a different fashion than in the 70s.
It is important to keep in mind that our two main discourses are less empirically than
analytically based at this stage. Other discourses may emerge, like the three different ideas
about the rural that Svendsen (2004) tells about from Denmark. In addition to a centralist
discourse there are two discourses fighting about the understanding of the rural; an
agriculturalist and a non-agriculturalist. The first one emerges from the farmers’ fight for
mere survival, that resulted in an agricultural discourse where production is at core. This
discourse peaked in the 1960s. The latter discourse surfaced in the 1970s, when intellectuals
in the cities constructed a rhetoric and symbolic idea about rural naturalness as opposed to
urban alienation, a process that Svendsen calls rural urbanisation.
Using Foucault’s methods
Discourse analysis does, as already mentioned, not give us a clear-cut ’recipe’ for conducting
research. We have to choose methods that fit our problem statement. We have chosen two
different approaches to the text analysis. Foucault inspires the one we describe under this
heading, where we search for patterns in a number of relevant texts. The other method, in the
next paragraph, concerns making use of linguistic methods for revealing how discourses
produce ideas (leaning on Van Dijk’s work (Van Dijk 2002)).
When reading texts on the four arenas, we have initially tried not to interpret, but rather to
describe. Kendall and Wickham claim ”archaeological research is non-interpretive (Kendall
and Wickham 1999: 26). We are looking for ways that people talk about the rural - we focus
on the explicit. Foucault says about his archaeology that ”it is a regulated transformation of
what has already been written. It is not a return to the innermost secret of the origin; it is the
systematic description of a discourse-object” (Foucault 1972:140).
This part of our study looks for patterns in a collection of texts about rurality. In looking for
patterns, Kendall and Wickham (1999) suggest that: ”It might help you to learn this technique
if,… you make use of…the diagram with arrows. ..[W]here the historians…draw the arrows
in the diagram to demonstrate causal flows,…,[you] always make the arrows doubleended…such that they connect every component to every other component, and/or by leaving
the arrows out of the diagram altogether, you will actually demonstrate the absence of causal
flows, you will show how components have only contingent relations with one another, that,
to put it bluntly, they may be connected in any pattern or they may not be connected at all”
(Ibid:7).
The problem, which may also be the reason why there are few detailed methodical
descriptions on this, is that we are supposed to search for patterns, but that the criteria for
identifying these patterns are not given on beforehand. The criteria are instead a part of the
description of the discourse. ”Whenever one… between a number of statements, can define a
regularity, we will say, for the sake of convenience, that we are dealing with a discursive
formation” (Foucault 1972: 38). Collections of statements that in one way or the other can be
said to form a regularity, are discursive formations, and ”the conditions to which the elements
of this division are subjected we shall call the rules of formation” (Ibid). The hunt for and the
9
identification of these rules will represent an important turning point in the analysis, but ”we
must seek the rules of its formation in discourse itself” (Ibid: 79)
Foucault (1972) does not present a good recipe for this search. Instead he says ”I am well
aware that the risks are considerable…one is forced to advance beyond familiar territory, far
from the certainties to which one is accustomed, towards an as yet uncharted land and
unforeseeable conclusion” (Ibid:39). Kendall og Wickham (1999) advise us to focus on ”the
identification of rules of the production of statements” and “the identification of rules that
delimit the sayable” (Ibid: 42).
We have chosen to focus our text analysis on white papers, statements from the Minister of
Local Government and Regional Development and transcripts from parliamentary debates.
Even if all of these appear as written texts when we analyse them, they need to be categorized
in relation to the nature of their origin. The distinction between written/oral texts is not an
absolute one, and definitions should be placed on a continuum between the two poles. White
papers are the clearest written texts: Although orally negotiated and constructed, they are only
presented publicly as written word. The statements are prepared as manuscripts in advance,
but presented as speech in Parliament. Debates in Parliament consist of oral contributions,
which seem to have a varying degree of written preparedness about them. The main speeches
of the political parties seem to be based on manuscripts. As the debates progress, however,
and political representatives to a larger extent discuss between themselves, it is evident that
the contributions become increasingly oral and unprepared in nature. Some of our data is then
purely oral in origin, even if we study them as written transcripts. The definition of texts as
more or less written/oral is important because it is a part of placing our data in context,
indicating if what is said is purely personal attitudes or if it expresses the party’s standpoint in
general.
Level of preparedness concerning the texts was important when choosing empirical point of
departure. We started off reading parliamentary debates. In these texts, which are the least
prepared and most oral in nature, identifying political meanings and ideologies is easier than
in texts of a more written nature. We believe that this is based on the situation in which these
texts are produced: Speech is often more direct than written text, and the fact that these texts
are produced within ongoing political debates, make the political opinions appear clearer. The
differences between the arguments and ideologies of the political parties become more
obvious when these universes of meaning ‘fight’ each other directly. Another reason for
starting with the debates is that several parties in governmental cooperation, more often
produce white papers and statements. While these products mirror the parties’ negotiated
points of view, the challenge concerning the parliamentary debates is that the speeches from
the rostrum of the Parliament to a larger degree open up for individual variation in meanings
among party members.
Another empirical point of departure concerns time. We find it most adequate to start in the
present and move backwards. This move ensures that we know what we are looking for when
we study older texts – we are tracing the present discourses back in time and at the same time
possibly identifying discourses that are now gone or have very little standing.
A very preliminary analysis of the texts can be that when it comes to discourses on rurality,
the political arena in Norway seems to be divided in two. The parties situated on the political
10
right wing2 are mainly focused on economic arguments for keeping settlement in rural areas.
The only reason perceived legitimate for the survival of small places is long-term economic
sustainability relatively independent of public funding and support. Even if economic
arguments for keeping the distributed settlement pattern are found also on the political left
side/centre3, these parties have a more romantic view of the countryside. They claim that the
preservation of settlement in rural areas is of great value, even if the places concerned need
public support. These arguments from the political debates give clues to the more underlying
discourses beneath the policies. In short, the political left/centre view life on the countryside
more positively that parties to the right. The parties’ underlying assumptions of market and/or
state as developing forces in rural areas also influence their policies. The political right is
sceptical towards state involvement specifically designed for the survival of rural and regional
areas and largely support policies that aim at creating a more favourable environment for
private sector development. The parties situated left/centre, on the other hand, are relatively
friendly towards public involvement in rural and regional development and argue for concrete
action programmes for rural areas.
Social-cognitive text analysis
In the approach above, the discourses are supposed to show themselves after some reading of
relevant texts. What we have found using this method on the political arena, are patterns in
the political landscape that have revealed themselves through our analysis of the
Parliamentary debate in 2002 about rural policies. We have more or less presented the whole
present spectre of ideologies, and some interesting patterns have been identified. A weakness
with this approach is the difficulty concerning identifying links between arenas and the lack
of description of how discourses work to produce ideas. With no guiding principles outside
the texts, this approach also becomes very challenging when we want to go back in time. This
is why we combine the approach with more detailed text-analytical cases.
We have strategically picked a political text to show how this approach works. We have used
Van Dijks text-analytical tool in order to reveal how the discourses produces and changes
existing discourses as the texts are presented orally or in writing. This approach is stronger
than the first one when it comes to describing how the discourse works, but it is more
vulnerable to our choice since the analysis is very much a function of what kind of text we
pick, and there are no theoretical guidelines for picking one text rather than another.
Through a selected text-example we will in the following demonstrate how our analytic
framework can be utilised in an analysis on the political arena. Criterion for selecting specific
quotations is basically ideological ‘intensity’ of statements. Much of the debate on rural and
regional policies is occupied with detailed discussions on specific policy instruments.
Although interesting, it is for our purpose more fruitful to start off with statements that give
more evident clues to underlying ideologies of the political parties. The text selected and
presented beneath is loaded with political meanings, values and traces of ideology. The text
fits into our analytical framework described above in two ways. Firstly, it is part of the
present discourses, which later on in our research will be contrasted with the process in the
70s. Secondly, the text is not part of the hegemonic discourse today, like it was in the 70s.
In a Parliamentary debate on the 7th of May 2002, the leader of The Norwegian Centre Party,
Odd Roger Enoksen, uttered the following:
2
The Conservative Party of Norway, The Progress Party
The Socialist Left Party, The Norwegian Labour Party, The Norwegian Centre Party, The Christian Democrats
of Norway, The Liberal Party of Norway
3
11
Few countries have got better reasons for leading an active rural policy than Norway. Very much of
our business-life and our potential for growth is connected to the exploitation of natural resources,
which means that we have to maintain a distributed settlement pattern. It is the small smack- not the
trawler- that is used when we advertise Norwegian fisheries. It is the fruit trees in Hardanger, it is the
coastal fleet and the fisheries in Lofoten and it is the North Cape that is used in advertising Norway as
a tourist destination. It is the decentralised, small scale Norwegian farming that, more than anything
else, has guaranteed us against extensive animal diseases, like we have seen in other countries. It is the
fisheries, sea farming, energy and maritime sector that have been pointed out to be our foremost growth
businesses. In addition, the IT-based businesses have got a substantial potential for growth. You will
not travel much around the country before you see the positive effects of our distributed settlement
pattern: Small local communities with an active and good business life, a rich cultural life, tight social
ties, where people care about their neighbours, good conditions for growing up and not least wellfunctioning public care for the elderly. All in all rural Norway is a good place to live in, and we also
see in residence-surveys that people actually want to settle in rural Norway.
What Enoksen says here is influenced by a number of different elements. The Centre Party
has got underlying political ideologies, opinions and also something that they hold to be true
about rural areas and policies. All of these affect what Enoksen is saying in this specific
context. He also knows a lot about government rural policy and the knowledge and opinions
of his political opponents, which also influences his speech. Some of the facts and opinions
that we can read in the text are personal, some of it is shared with his political allies and some
of it is taken-for-granted in Norwegian culture. Some of the statements are mere rhetoric. We
will use van Dijk’s model of political cognition and discourse in order to understand and
analyse political texts as arenas for producing ideas about rurality (van Dijk 2002). Enoksen is
producing, but also reproducing or changing, existing ideas about rurality. Most of these ideas
exist before Enoksen starts to talk, and the talk must be analysed in the light of relevant
background information about the participants and the situation where the text is being
produced.
Ideology, knowledge and opinion
Enoksen will be influenced when he speak by underlying ideologies that are more or less
independent of this event and also this issue. Ideologies are general and abstract; they apply in
many different social domains4. Enoksen is, as a leader of the Centre Party, influenced by an
ideology where the natural resources and the environment is regarded as superior to other
short-term considerations (CP's program). This ideology influences his views on other issues,
for instance it is one of the reasons why his party is against Norwegian membership in the
EU, since they claim that the EU focuses too much on economic growth at the expense of the
environment. The resistance towards EU is further fuelled by CP’s view on foreign issues in
general, like when they urge the importance of Norwegian ownership to our resources and
when Enoksen emphasise the lack of control over animal diseases internationally as opposed
to our responsible routines. So we see that ideologies structures opinions on other issues than
rural policies. Opinions about rurality can also be structured by a combination of several
ideologies. Lastly, different parties may share ideologies or values, like the fight against too
much market forces at the expense of public control, which are shared between the Socialist
Left Party (SP) and the Centre Party, even if they have different opinions regarding rural
policies.
Since ideologies are abstract and general they are not stated explicitly in a debate like this, but
when we know from the program that emphasis is on natural resources, we can see traces of
4
Solberg, the Minister for rural development mentioned later on, for instance, is advocating less public
interference in society on several areas, where the policy for rural areas is just one.
12
CP’s ideology in Enoksen's speech: …our potential for growth is connected to the
exploitation of natural resources,... The ideology is further combined with another CP
ideology, namely that the nation state, not foreigners or the market forces, should have the
power over Norwegian resources. Therefore CP attributes to the government the
responsibility for securing and controlling the exploitation of the natural resources. Together
these ideologies structure some of CP’s meaning about the policy for rural areas, for instance
the need for public support for the people exploiting natural resources, which lies behind the
second part of the sentence above: ..which means that we have to maintain a distributed
settlement pattern.
As mentioned earlier, Enoksen’s knowledge on rural policies is a mixture of personal
knowledge, knowledge that he shares with a social group and knowledge that is taken to be
true within the Norwegian culture. Nobody disputes the fact that Norway has experienced a
rural exodus since the 1970s, and this knowledge forms a part of the culturally shared
knowledge in Norway. Van Dijk calls this ‘the Common Ground’. Characteristic of this kind
of knowledge is that it is undisputed, it forms the basis of communication, and it cannot be
read directly out of the text. Likewise, nobody disputes the ‘fact’ that the distributed
settlement pattern was based on many small-scale farmers and fishermen, and that the
reduction in employment in these industries is one important reason for the rural exodus.
Most political knowledge is group-knowledge that will be regarded as knowledge by the
social group, but as political opinions by opposing groups. Enoksen underlines that it is
government responsibility to support population and business life in rural areas, which is
stated very clearly in the first sentence: Few countries have got better reasons for leading an
active rural policy than Norway. Enoksen here reacts to the government policy presented
earlier, where he advocates an active rural policy (as opposed to a passive one where only the
strong one will survive). This view on the policy is not so much based on a socialist ideology
as a centre-periphery axis where CP wants to place themselves among the ‘powerless’ people
in the periphery. He hints on his close contact with people in the rural when he says: You will
not travel much around the country…., thereby insinuating that at least he knows what he is
talking about and his opponents doesn’t. Anyway, the group-knowledge in this case is that
people, money and power is being centralised to Oslo, and that a small elite in Oslo is
controlling this process. This is the knowledge that Enoksen shares with CP and also a larger
social group, and it is made relevant to the debate when he speaks against a government
policy where the same elite is, in Enoksen’s understanding, given more control over the
centralisation process.
Enoksen also holds it to be true that the growth in Norwegian economy to a large degree
hinges on activities that are located in rural areas. This ‘truth’ is of course linked to his party’s
emphasis on exploitation of natural resources. This is group knowledge: it is abstract and
general, so that it applies to a lot of issues and it is taken to be true by Enoksen and his social
group - even if his opponents will regard this as beliefs. When Enoksen is elaborating in
several paragraphs on the growth potential of the industries in the rural areas, it is exactly
because he knows that his opponents would regard it as beliefs. By stating it as generally
known knowledge he uses a rhetorical move to persuade the audience of the general validity
of his group knowledge.
Whereas knowledge is factual to persons, groups or cultures according to truth criteria, there
are also beliefs that can be found on all these three levels, but they are based on more
evaluative criteria (good/bad). These are what van Dijk terms opinions and attitudes. Most
13
opinions are not taken for granted, like knowledge, although a culture may well have a
number of opinions that are not disputed and hence have all the properties of Common
Ground knowledge. There are signs in our material that a culturally shared opinion is that
people should have the ability to live in rural areas, if possible. Different groups differ when it
comes to how much effort the public should put into achieving this aim, though. Another
shared opinion seems to be the need to facilitate growth, in one way or the other, which is
argued both by the Government and by Enoksen in the speech above. However, this latter
growth-opinion may have a tactical reasoning behind it when it comes to the Centre Party,
since they know that these are values that the government emphasises. The same doubt can be
placed on the governments “opinion” that it is preferable to have a distributed settlement
pattern.
Opinions are most often stated directly, like Enoksen’s positive attitude towards life in the
rural areas: Small local communities with an active and good business life, a rich cultural life,
tight social ties, where people care about their neighbours, good conditions for growing up
and not the least a well-functioning public care for the elderly. All in all rural Norway is seen
as a good place to live. He shares this opinion and attitude with his social group, but this
opinion is not found in any of the speeches made by Members of Parliament who represent
the Government parties. What makes these statements opinions and not facts is the use of
evaluative words. “Small” is meant to be a positive characteristic of a community, and the
story that Enoksen is telling about these kinds of communities is filled out by the words
active, good, rich, well functioning and care. It is not essentially true to Enoksen that this is
the state of affairs in rural Norway, it is more a story that he wants to tell about the rural based
on the norms (care about your neighbour) and values (tight social ties, rich social life) that
Enoksen wants to associate with rural life.
Text in context
Enoksen is not saying everything he has to say about rural areas and rural policies in the cited
text. The text is only the tip of the iceberg of opinions, knowledge and rhetoric that Enoksen
would have to offer. Enoksen’s knowledge about the setting and the way the discussion
develops along with his opinions and knowledge, decides what he says and how he says it.
Especially on the political arena there is a lot of lead on what is being said, for instance the
fact that Enoksen is participating in a debate about rural policies. This means that all
participants agree about a number of rules about what can be talked about, on many facts
about policies and on the situation in rural areas. There is less room for misunderstandings
about the context and rules of debate than on other arenas. More will be implicit in
Parliamentary debates than for instance on a stand or in a television debate. The participants
already know very much about others’ opinions and what kind of social groups they represent,
and this information affects what is being said without any reference to it in the text. All
participants know the party programmes of their opponents, and they also know what member
is representing what county. When they talk and interpret, they will take this into account.
Participants in the political debate have a lot of contextual facts in common, for instance
everything that is already said in the debate before Enoksen takes the stand. Also, one week
before the speech by Enoksen, on the 30th of April 2002, the one-year old Government
presented its regional and rural policy to the Parliament. The statement about the regional and
rural policy is meant to show the intentions of the Government, and the other parties are
invited to debate the statement and present their view on what the policies should be. This was
the event taking place one week later. The Minister of Local Government and Regional
Development, Erna Solberg, presented the statement. One of the messages was that the
14
Government wanted to lift the aim of keeping the structure in the settlement pattern from a
local to a regional level. The fact that the Minister presented the Government policy one week
before Enoksen’s speech is part of the reason why he so strongly states that we need an active
rural policy, and much of his use of the word growth may be explained by the statement
(which he have had one week to study in writing) of Solberg called “Growth – in the whole
country”. He wants to confront the Government with the opinion that if they want growth,
they have to support people and businesses in rural areas, since this is where the potential for
growth can be found - much like the way subsidies for industrial growth in rural areas was
legitimated before the 1960s5.
In addition to our analysis of how ideas are constructed on each of the four arenas, we will
study how discourses interact with each other across arenas: ”The relationship
between…[arenas]…are of a complex interactive nature. Such processes need to be
unravelled in an effort to understand flows of meanings and power which combine to create
social constructions of such things as the rural” (Jones 1995:39). We need to link the texts
from different arenas.
Links to other arenas
Enoksen is speaking and the others are listening, and he is constructing ideas about rurality as
he speaks. If the listener agrees with his description of rural areas and what measures to take,
they will accept this to be the ‘truth’. If we listen repeatedly to similar descriptions of the
situation, through media or from politicians, without alternative descriptions available, these
kinds of descriptions will be generalised and eventually enter into the culturally shared
knowledge about rurality and the role of government.
Enoksen makes two explicit references to the academic arena in his speech. Evidently some
researchers have concluded that: It is the fisheries, sea farming, energy and maritime sector
that have been pointed out to be our foremost growth businesses. Also, allegedly there is a
survey stating, “people actually wants to settle in rural Norway”. These academic
contributions enter into Enoksen’s group-knowledge, and are used along with other ‘truths’ as
he tries to make his opponents adopt more of his conception about rural Norway.
The setting of the debate is internal between the members of Parliament: The text is not
directly producing and influencing ideas about rurality outside the Parliament, like for
instance newspaper articles or television debates. Of course, one essential outcome of the
debate is final changes in policies for rural areas, which in the next turn will affect the idea
about rurality in general. Moreover, the ideas that the members of Parliament are trying to
transfer to other politicians - the production and the changes in ideas that take place in this
debate - eventually affect the message that the various politicians bring to the public through
television debates and on stands. One very clear link between the political and the popular
arena are all the newspaper articles written by Minister Solberg following the statement in
Parliament.
This is as far as van Dijk takes us, and it is a useful approach, although not enough to answer
our problem statement. We will be using his model when we analyse political texts, as part of
our methodological design. The analysis of the text can be further elaborated as we try to trace
and explain more thoroughly the different aspects of the text (ideologies, truths, contexts) and
5
Rural policies was not invented, but industrial policies had a rural component. NOU 2004:2, p. 57
15
we could also strategically pick other texts, for instance from the present hegemonic
discourse.
The four building blocks presented in this paper is the first step in our methodological design,
and we will probably refine this methodology and the appurtenant methods until the whole
project is finished.
Conclusion
How are ideas about rurality constructed, and how do these ideas influence rural policies? It
has been the aim of this paper to show how a methodological design can be built when we are
trying to approach this constructivist question. A discourse analytical method cannot be
developed independent of the social practice that the discursive practice it is woven into.
Therefore, a skeleton of two discourses of rurality has been identified through our reading of
present political debates and the history of Norwegian rural policies. Each discourse has had
its own hegemonic period in modern Norwegian history. These two periods form a refined
framework that guides the selection of texts from Jones’ four discourse-producing arenas. The
texts are then approached from one out of two angles. One strategy is to go through several
selected texts from each of the four arenas, searching for patterns that tell us what the
discourses are about and who produces them. The other approach is to pick ‘rich’ texts with
care and to analyse these in-depth, revealing both the structure of the discourses, how it links
up to the present political debate and also showing how the texts seek to construct rurality in
one way rather than another. Both methods have been exemplified through texts from the
political arena.
As we claimed in the introduction of this paper, the link from the epistemology down to
methodology of discourse analysis is not a readily developed one. This paper has shown some
of the problems you run into trying to design a method for showing how ideas are constructed.
We have shown that a strategy cannot be developed independently of the research question
and the social practice that the discourses are woven into. We have also given some examples
of how you can limit down your problem statement, limit your search for texts to selected
arenas, and finally we have provided examples of two different ways of dealing with the
selected texts.
16
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The Norwegian version of a white paper
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